life

2021 is here. Now what?

January 6, 2021

It’s been a bit daunting to approach planning for this year, given the upheaval and chaos we are still experiencing. I have yet to meet a business person who did not declare 2020 to be the most perplexing and challenging year of their career.

Despite all of the unknowns, we still have to have a plan for 2021. Here are some aspects of your marketing that, no matter what is happening with COVID, racial challenges, or politics, you need to focus on in 2021.

You can’t slide backward. Every business needs to consciously protect their market share and brand awareness. You can’t afford to slip from your consumer’s mind. You must maintain a baseline presence or your brand equity, top-of-mind awareness, and favored status with your current customers, or it will quickly erode.

It’s incredibly tempting just to lie low and wait for all of this to blow over. Keep in mind, there has never been an economic downturn where that decision worked out well for an organization. Once you start to slide, it’s incredibly expensive and potentially impossible to recover from.

Expect the need for adaptations. This is not the time to make long-term plans that are inflexible or don’t give you room to pivot. Change has always been an element in the marketing world, but given the societal issues we’re facing right now, it’s almost a constant. Whatever you are working on for 2021, build in plenty of wiggle room for you to shift as needed.

Be mindful when you sign contracts or make any long-term commitments that they have protectionary language that would allow you to react to something at a moment’s notice, be it a world event or something very local. 2021 is probably the year to think in quarters, not the entire year.

Yes, build the plan for the whole year but be ready to retool the plan every 90 days.

Don’t assume this is how it will always be. If there is one common theme running through our country right now, it’s that people are starving to get back to face-to-face interactions in every aspect of their lives. We will go back to in-person meetings, conferences, trade shows, and live demos. Yes, digital is all-consuming right now, and it absolutely should play a critical role in your 2021 plan, but so should human contact.

How, when, and where this will happen is still pretty murky. Many organizations are already working on their 2021 live conferences and trade shows and fully expect them to be well attended. You want to carve out a budget for live interactions (one on one or one to many) in anticipation that they’ll happen, so you don’t get left out.

Check your tone. There’s a lot of talk about being marketing tone-deaf these days. It seems as though the sensitivity meter is set on high for just about every person on the planet. You need to understand the issues and sensitivities of your audience and double-check your creative, messaging, and delivery to make sure that you’re in alignment with the current sentiments.

The level of consumer intolerance is at an all-time high when a company does not demonstrate a desire to be inclusive or acknowledge whatever issue is forefront in the consumer’s mind, so don’t put yourself in that sort of firestorm unnecessarily.

2020 was a year like no other, but we can’t let its magnitude paralyze us into being unprepared in 2021. We know enough to set ourselves up for success, and the time to execute that plan is now.

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Your words and actions need to match

November 4, 2020

As marketers, we’ve always known that a brand’s internal actions should align with its external messaging. Companies find themselves in hot water when they make promises they have no intention or history of keeping.

When a brand is exposed for saying one thing and doing another, it rarely ends well, and that was true before social media and when the world was normal.

But today, in the middle of the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement, and as we await the results of a very contentious election, it seems even riskier to make public statements that you and your employees can’t live up to every day.

There’s significant social pressure for business owners and leaders to speak out on issues and take a stand. We’ve certainly seen that over the past few months, and that pressure has only increased as we approached the election and everything heated up even more.

Over the last few months, we’ve seen companies called out by their employees for their lack of racial equity in hiring, promotions, and pay despite their public declarations that Black lives matter. People are not particularly tolerant or accepting of a superficial response to a serious social issue. Posting a black square or a generic pledge of outrage against racism is not enough, and in the current environment, it’s just asking for scrutiny and criticism.

The same is true for the pandemic. Taking a strong stand advocating for social distancing and masking on your social channels or requiring your customers to comply with stringent rules requires that your employees also honor these new rules.

A few months back, I flew for the first time since March. I was ready – I had several masks, some disinfecting wipes, and plenty of hand sanitizer. The airline’s ground crew and gate agents were all properly masked and keeping an appropriate distance. But when I boarded the plane, I noticed that one of the flight attendants was wearing his mask over his mouth but not his nose. He wasn’t working anywhere near my seat, but I kept watching to see if one of the other flight attendants would say something. No one did.

A few days later, I was flying home and happened to be seated near a pilot in full uniform who was deadheading to work. As we got ready to take off, he had his mask on.

Once we were in the air, the mask went away. Two hours later, one of the flight attendants asked him (finally) to put his mask on, which he did for about five minutes before taking it back off.

If I noticed these two employees and their disregard for their employer’s requirements, I’m sure other passengers did as well. In the short run, this opens the door for customers to ignore the rules, which leads to the other customers being uncomfortable and opting not to come back.

In the long run, it puts the business’s viability at risk. Imagine what would have happened if one of the passengers snapped a photo of one of these employees actively ignoring their company’s policy. It would have spread like wildfire on social media and been a PR nightmare.

If there was ever a time when consumers and employees expect our words and our actions to align, it’s now. Gone are the days when lip service or a superficial effort is considered acceptable.

So before you take a stand publicly on any hotbed social issue, you’d better be ready to examine your company’s policies and practices. You’ll want to make sure you don’t promise something you can’t honor. The consequences of that choice may be more than you can afford.

This was originally published in the Des Moines Business Record as one of Drew’s weekly columns.

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How do we address black lives matter?

October 28, 2020

I admit that I have some trepidation tackling the inequality issue that is part of our country and the world’s focus right now.

But that’s sort of the point, isn’t it? If we don’t get over our discomfort, or in my case, my feeling that this isn’t my time to talk, then we can’t advance solutions all that far.

I will ask for your grace as I muddle my way through this. Like you, I am appalled by George Floyd’s death and am hopeful that the movement it has inspired will help us actually deal with the inequality that permeates our country.

I’ll never know what it’s like to experience discrimination as a consistent part of my reality, so I can’t speak to that. But I do know how we, as organizations, approach and talk about important and sensitive social issues can either serve our community and our companies well or put us quickly into crisis mode.

That’s the very specific lens through which I believe I am qualified to offer some guidance.

So, how should our businesses be responding?

If your company has already made or is planning to make a public declaration in an ad, shared a meme or made a statement on social media, or sent an email to your team or clients, then I believe you must commit to doing more than that.

We’re already seeing organizations being accused, often by their own employees, of hypocrisy and posturing, rather than genuinely being committed to being part of the solution. From a communications standpoint, how do we make it clear that this isn’t just for show?

This problem wasn’t created in a day, and we aren’t going to eradicate it in a day. It’s going to take many daily decisions, policy and program changes, law changes, etc. And we need to live those choices and actions out loud.

As we move past our initial expressions of outrage and actually start taking action to affect change, we need to expose our efforts and our progress to our employees, customers, and community.

One idea that I think has merit is creating a report card for your organization. On the report card, list all of the areas where inequality exists in your company. For example, if your employee population lacks diversity, depending on how severe the problem is, you might give yourself a D.

For each area on the report card, work with your employees to create an improvement plan, and then publicly review your grade quarterly. Be transparent about your plans, progress, and challenges. You might even consider posting your report card on your website.

Depending on the specifics, you could invite others to participate in the quarterly scoring. For example, your employees could weigh in on your diversity training efforts or your corporate giving practices. You can ask your customers to give you feedback on how safe and respected they feel when they’re in your place of business or interacting with your employees.

What I like about this idea is that it represents the reality that we’re going to be addressing this issue for a while, and it’s going to require incremental growth and change. It also makes it clear that your company and its leaders are not just giving lip service to this social concern.

This level of transparency will build trust and confidence in your efforts and encourage your employees, clients, and our community to support and ideally, join you in your efforts.

If the report card idea isn’t for you, then take its basic tenants and create your own accountability tool. But that’s what it’s going to take – us holding ourselves and each other accountable as we tackle the systematic and institutional racism that exists in every facet of our society today.

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How do we address black lives matter?

July 1, 2020

I admit that I have some trepidation tackling the inequality issue that is dominating our country and the world’s focus right now. But that’s sort of the point, isn’t it? If we don’t get over our discomfort, or in my case, my feeling that this isn’t my time to talk, then we can’t advance solutions all that far when it comes to addressing Black Lives Matter.

I will ask for your grace as I muddle my way through this. Like you, I am appalled by George Floyd’s death and am hopeful that the movement it has inspired will help us actually deal with the inequality that permeates our country.

I’ll never know what it’s like to experience discrimination as a consistent part of my reality, so I can’t speak to that. But I do know how we, as organizations, approach and talk about important and sensitive social issues can either serve our community and our companies well or put us quickly into crisis mode.

That’s the very specific lens through which I believe I am qualified to offer some guidance.

So, how should our businesses be responding?

If your company has already made or is planning to make a public declaration in an ad, shared a meme or made a statement on social media, or sent an email to your team or clients, then I believe you must commit to doing more than that.

We’re already seeing organizations being accused, often by their own employees, of hypocrisy and posturing, rather than genuinely being committed to being part of the solution. From a communications standpoint, how do we make it clear that this isn’t just for show?

This problem wasn’t created in a day, and we aren’t going to eradicate it in a day. It’s going to take many daily decisions, policy and program changes, law changes, etc. And we need to live those choices and actions out loud.

As we move past our initial expressions of outrage and actually start taking action to affect change, we need to expose our efforts and our progress to our employees, customers, and community.

One idea that I think has merit is creating a report card for your organization. On the report card, list all of the areas where inequality exists in your company. For example, if your employee population lacks diversity, depending on how severe the problem is, you might give yourself a D.

For each area on the report card, work with your employees to create an improvement plan, and then publicly review your grade quarterly. Be transparent about your plans, progress, and challenges. You might even consider posting your report card on your website.

Depending on the specifics, you could invite others to participate in the quarterly scoring. For example, your employees could weigh in on your diversity training efforts or your corporate giving practices. You can ask your customers to give you feedback on how safe and respected they feel when they’re in your place of business or interacting with your employees.

What I like about this idea is that it represents the reality that we’re going to be addressing this issue for a while, and it’s going to require incremental growth and change. It also makes it clear that your company and its leaders are not just giving lip service to this social concern.

This level of transparency will build trust and confidence in your efforts and encourage your employees, clients, and our community to support and ideally, join you in your efforts.

If the report card idea isn’t for you, then take its basic tenants and create your own accountability tool. But that’s what it’s going to take – us holding ourselves and each other accountable as we tackle the systematic and institutional racism that exists in every facet of our society today.

This was originally published in the Des Moines Business Record, as one of Drew’s weekly columns.

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Social media fails during a crisis

April 22, 2020

I covered this not 6 months ago but feel that the situation each and every one of us finds ourselves in today, calls for us to revisit social media and the way it has changed the way we learn about, share and react to big events – good or bad. We rush to it to celebrate but we also rush to it when the world is in danger or a tragedy has occurred, whether it’s a natural disaster like a hurricane or the situation we are in today, the spread of the Coronavirus or COVID-19.

For many of us, social media has replaced traditional media and news sources for that initial alert. I don’t know about you, but I learn something new every day about the Coronavirus on-line. It’s true that I, and many of you, still turn to our more traditional news outlets for ongoing news and updates, but Facebook and Twitter seem to not only inform us of the minute by minute happenings but social media uniquely reflects the sentiments and the humanity of the situation.

When we’re in crisis, we want more than the facts. We want to share the experience. We want to express our outrage or sympathy. It’s the emotion of the moment that pulls us into the social channels and keeps us there, eager to participate.

That’s why people react so strongly when a gaffe occurs. The emotions are so heightened that when someone does or says something insensitive or self-serving, people go nuts.

So, how should we handle social media when the country or the world is in crisis? The truth is, if it’s not handled well, you can create your own crisis. And where will it explode? On social media, of course.

When your brand stumbles on a regular old day, you may get blasted for it, but it passes. But when you fail during a heightened time of emotion and scrutiny – that can stick on your brand forever.

Here are some social media fails to avoid when the world around you is focusing on something serious.

Curb all regular postings: This is not the time to share articles, post photos or promote your business. And by the way – doing any sort of hybrid posting where you speak of the situation AND your company just smacks of borrowing from someone else’s sorrow for your own gain.

Pause all auto postings and auto-tweets: Many people use tools that auto-populate their feeds with great content. But accidentally acting like everything is normal when it most definitely is not can make your brand look at best, out of touch and worst, insensitive.

Don’t use the tragedy to get social cred: This is not the time to solicit likes or followers, even if you offer donations or some other support for whoever is suffering. Profiting in any way from the circumstance makes you look petty.

It’s never funny: I’m sort of stunned when it happens but it seems like some moronic brand always tries their hand at humor. Trust me, it’s never funny. During Hurricane Sandy, Gap joked in a tweet that everyone should just stay inside and hit gap.com for some retail therapy, not unlike some other brands doing the same right now since we are all supposed to be staying at home as much as possible.

Make sure you know which profile you’re using: There have been many incidents where a social media brand manager thought they were using their own personal account to comment on a tragedy or social happening and instead, embarrassed their brand and got themselves fired.

Do all of these faux pas mean you have to stay silent during a national or international crisis? Absolutely not. Share authentic emotion. Let them see the humanity behind your brand.

Be a resource. Be encouraging. Be genuinely helpful. Be real.

Just don’t be a social media failure. This isn’t the time to promote, profit or proselytize. It’s time to be human.

This was originally published in the Des Moines Business Record, as one of Drew’s weekly columns.

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Productivity Hacks

May 31, 2017

I don’t know anyone who feels as though there are enough hours in the day. Whether you want more time to spend with your family, to chase a new business opportunity or to pursue that big dream you’ve always tucked in the back of your head – you could always use an extra hour or few. And to get there, your productivity needs to be at its peak.

We could absolutely do less and for some people, that’s a viable and attractive option.  But for those of us who aren’t ready to slow down but still want to be as efficient as possible – there are some tools that can help.

For me, there are some absolutes that must be present when I consider a new productivity tool.  Missing any one of these is usually a deal breaker for me.

• Must be accessible on all of my devices (laptop, tablet and mobile phone) if appropriate
• Must sync all data between my devices so no matter which tool I’m using to get to the tool – the data is current
• Has to be Apple/Mac friendly
• Simple, simple, simple – I don’t have the time or the desire to learn something complicated
• Responsive customer service team – if I run into trouble, I want to know there’s a human being somewhere in the mix who can help me
• Can’t cost an arm or leg but I am willing to spend some money to get the fully loaded version or some of the features (like sharing capacity) that I need

I thought it might be useful to share a few of the tools that I use on a daily basis to keep my world in order and to be as productive as possible.

Evernote:  Think of Evernote as a virtual super secretary that helps you keep everything you might need at your fingertips.  It’s like a virtual file cabinet that stores notes, visuals, web clippings, digitized business cards, audio files and so much more.

What makes this tool so useful is the ability to tag everything you add.  So searching for something that you stored two years ago becomes a breeze, as long as you’ve created a simple tagging system/hierarchy.

My Evernote is a mishmash of blog post ideas, notes from client meetings, web clippings of things I want to share with someone or refer to later, my digital Rolodex and a list of vacation options for upcoming trips.

Wunderlist:  I searched for a couple years to find a To Do list app that actually helped me get things done.  I can keep multiple lists, share them with other people so there’s built in accountability and it is easy to access on all of my devices.  Most To Do apps are unnecessarily complicated.  Part of what I love about Wunderlist is its simplicity.

My lists include client To Dos, things I need to do around my house, my grocery list, phone calls I need to make, next steps (tied to calendar reminders) for some new business prospecting and best of all – I can share tasks with others on my team and assign responsibility as needed.

Tiny Scan Pro: This phone app produces incredibly legible scans of any document. If you travel or are out of the office on a regular basis, being able to scan a document and then either email it to someone, upload it to Evernote, DropBox, Google Drive or other cloud tools is invaluable. If you have the companion app Tiny FAX, you can even go old school and fax it to someone.

Productivity – It’s all about getting things done smarter, faster and with less hassle. Hopefully, these tools will allow you to spend more of your time doing the things you love the most with the people you love the most.

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Don’t forget to recognize your good fortune

November 23, 2016

It’s easy to get caught up in the metrics, goals, sales projections, and all the other things we measure in business. But as Thanksgiving approaches, I want to suggest that the best parts of being in business can’t be measured in dollars, percentages or increases but by your good fortune.

I don’t know about you, but by this time of year, I’m getting a little tired. I’ve been going full throttle ever since the holidays wound down last year and I’ve been chasing some pretty aggressive goals. This coming week is the perfect time to slow down and genuinely be grateful for our good fortune. Why not take advantage of the slower pace of Thanksgiving week and actually say thank you to those who make your work meaningful and successful.

Your employees: Let’s be honest – your employees are awesome, aren’t they? They care about your customers, they care about your business and they care about you. They work hard and your bottom line benefits from their efforts.

If you have a small staff, take the time to handwrite them a thank you note. Point out the things they do that make such a difference and let them know you appreciate all they do.

If your team is too big for that, gather them together and tell them how much you appreciate them. If you have multiple locations – why not shoot a video? It doesn’t have to be fancy — you can do it on your computer or phone. But make it personal.

Your clients: What if you spent a couple of hours this coming week and called all of your customers just to say thank you. Don’t try to sell them anything or talk about 2017. Just say thank you. But be specific – tell them why they’re such a wonderful client and why you appreciate them so much.

Encourage your employees to do the same thing with the customers that they serve.

Your vendors: You know who I’m talking about – the ones who bust a hump when your client shortens their deadline or wants to double their order but not the time it takes to get it done.

Let them know that you value their skills, commitment to your customers and willingness to bend over backward to help you over deliver. If there’s a sales rep or front line person who is always going out of their way for you – why not pick up the phone or write a note to their boss? Express your gratitude for their employee and make sure they know just how lucky they are to have them.

Your past customers: Even if they haven’t done business with you in a while, why not drop them a note to thank them for their past business? Tell them how much you appreciate the faith they had in you and the opportunity they gave you. Again, this isn’t a sales gimmick and you’re not trying to win them back. Just acknowledge that you enjoyed working with them, are grateful for the chance and wish them well.

In keeping with this blog post’s theme, I want to thank all of you for reading my blog content. Your emails, calls, notes and kind words make my day. I love it when you disagree, agree or just ask a question. I’m very grateful for our on-going conversation about marketing and all things business.

The magic of this week of giving thanks is that the more gratitude you express, the better you feel. You’ll be reminded again and again of your good fortune and that’s the perfect way to wind down this year and gear up for even more blessings in the year to come.

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Keep Up

November 2, 2016

I was recently asked to give a presentation on what students can do/learn so they can keep up with the ever-changing landscape of business and marketing today. As I was preparing the material to deliver, I quickly realized that my counsel wasn’t just for today’s students. It’s what all of us, whether we are a student or seasoned professional, need to be doing to stay current in this never static environment that we all exist in.

Recognize that your employer is not going to invest in your continuing growth. You need to do it for yourself: I’m not saying you won’t have the opportunity to attend a conference or take a class, but the reality is, no company can afford to provide as much continuing education as we need.

We have to be motivated to keep learning on our own or we will very quickly fall behind and once that happens, it’s tough to catch up. Regular consumption of podcasts, webinars, books, blogs, TED talks or whatever method works for you is critical.

Consume information wisely and quickly: We’ve all done it. You click on one online article and next thing you know, an hour has passed and you are far away from where you started. Today’s information overload can bury us in a blink if we’re not careful. We definitely need to consume information every day but we need to have a plan.

Use tools that help you sort and filter all the information out there to find what you need to keep up. An RSS Feed reader (I like Feedly) is an easy way to sort through huge volumes of data. You can also use customizable news apps like Flipboard to aggregate the latest news in the categories that matter most to your industry and career.

Learn to teach, write to learn: The linear nature of mentorships is evolving into a new model. We old dogs have a lot to learn from our younger, digital-native co-workers and we still have a few things to teach as well. When you know you’re going to be teaching others, you learn at a different level.

One of the best ways to teach is to write. As you do your research and fact checking, you will learn even more. A side benefit is that your writing skills will get stronger as well.

Be productive at the start: Most days, the distractions win. We rarely get as much done as we’d like, simply because of the interruptions and constant distractions that bombard us throughout the day.

But if you start your day in relative quiet and get the most pressing of your work done before you log into email, walk into a meeting or take that first call – you’ll feel less rushed and frenetic. If you include some of your media/information consumption into that morning routine, you’ll also feel more plugged into what’s going on in the world.

Surround yourself with other learners and thinkers: You can’t possibly learn it all. And even tougher – you can’t see it all from every angle. You need to create your own tribe of people who will share freely, encourage you, hold you accountable, challenge you and cheer you on.

Very few professionals make the time to create this sort of mastermind group of their own. But I can tell you from personal experience, it’s a safe place to admit you don’t know something, to ask someone you trust to hold you accountable to a goal or just to compare notes/experiences.

The world is not going to slow down. If anything, the speed of change is just going to accelerate even more. If we don’t master these habits now and develop this ability to keep learning and evolving – to keep up – we may never catch up.

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