GregoryPruitt's posterous

Musings on media, marketing & other related matters.

Talking Experiential Marketing

Exactly what are we talking about when we say experiential marketing anyway? It does mean different things to different people and there are web campaigns, for example, that some call experiential. But to me it comes down to one thing: it's got to be a physical experience. Consumers aren't just observing, they're actually interacting with a brand.

So what we're really talking about are brand experiences. Which is to say, not just communications, but visceral engagement.

Think back to Crispin Porter's U.S. launch of BMW's Mini. They bolted one of their little cars to the top of a Hummer and drove it around the country. Anyone who saw it immediately got the message of its smaller size and unique look based on the physical juxtaposition of the huge truck and the mini Mini. No ad could have conveyed it with the same impact.

Another great example is P&G's "Potty Palooza"--a 32-foot truck with 12 deluxe bathrooms, fully functional sinks, floral scents and of course Charmin toilet paper--making the rounds at events like state fairs and music festivals. Five years later, it's still to my mind the best toilet paper campaign since Mr. Whipple (chock up at least two huge coups for P&G in toilet paper alone).

Going back a little farther it was actually tobacco companies who out of necessity (banned from TV and other traditional channels) created lounges where people could sample the likes of Lucky Strike. Liquor companies have also been at the forefront of experiential marketing for much the same reason, and in their cases regularly take over bars and other spaces and create fun, drink infused experiences that are all about their particular brand.

OK, but why is experiential marketing important now?

For starters, there's just too much media out there for hardly any of it to really break through. No matter how clever, a commercial is but a :30 TV commercial. A billboard, but a 2-dimensional sheet of paper (OK, there are plenty of 3-D cool ones). But when the promotion we're talking about is a living, breathing and 4-dimensional thing (remember "time" is the fourth), it not only breaks through; it deeply resonates. People can not only see it and hear it, they can feel, smell, taste and touch it--something a mere representation, no matter how well executed, just can't do.

And here's another aspect. Physical interaction bores deeper into the human brain. We're far more likely to remember something we actually interacted with, than just saw or read about.

A very recent example is The Jersey Shore Store, a "Pop-Up Store" that popped up in Manhattan this past summer and shared the sights and sounds of the New Jersey shore with people walking past--and who could ignore the pretty show girls or ripped life guards standing in front and inviting them in for an introduction to the Atlantic City casinos and NJ’s picturesque beeches.

Full disclosure: I've been working with marketing communications firm Brushfire, who created the The Jersey Shore Store for their client NJ Tourism.

OK, but all that said, it's important to remember that none of this is new.

Just look back to the 1950's and legendary theater producer Joseph Papp, who built a stage-set, put it on the back of a truck and moved it about New York City with his actors performing Shakespeare for people who probably would never have been exposed to the Bard otherwise. It got the attention he was looking for and it wasn't long before he was being given the resources necessary to create "Shakespeare in the Park", still going strong nearly 50 years later.

Another stunt from that era and one of my favorite advertising promotions of all time was David Ogilvy's campaign for Cessna to help sell their pricey private jets. He sent carrier pigeons to rich executives suggesting that if they wished to try the plane out, they simply had to fill out a card, attach it to the pigeon and release it. Few of the pigeons actually made it back but the point (and the PR) was made.

Not too long ago another company from that category made their point when they parked one of their Gulfstream corporate jets on 42nd Street. It's an eye popping aircraft when you see it parked on a tarmac, but when it's in front of your office, it lands with a whole new impact.

Summing up, I'm not suggesting that experiential marketing should completely replace traditional (or for that matter) new media. But if a marketer's goods/services lend themselves to it, it should certainly be considered as part of the mix. Not only that, there's a great 1-2-3-4 punch here...

1) Start with the brand's value proposition. 2) Animate an organic experience out of it and execute at the right time in the right place. And 3) promote it with the rest of your communications toolbox. Use promotions like TV, radio, print and digital to raise awareness and drive traffic there. And then 4) crank up the PR.

The result will be a total brand-building platform that if done well, won’t be soon forgotten. Which means consumers will remember it the next time they're ready to buy (your brand, instead of your competition’s). 

Testing the new business boundaries of social media.

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OK, I'm talking about Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter. I'm not including Flickr which is a picture sharing site, or Myspace which seems to have shrunk--at least for now--to a music sharing site. Who knows, either could be the last one standing. But right now, there clearly is a big three, call it FLiT.

Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter, right?

OK, so when it comes to to these platforms, what are the social conventions? What's considered polite? What's aggressive but tolerable? And what crosses the line? When are you being gregarious and where to you cross into boorish?

I think Twitter is all about self-promotion and almost anything goes. That said, it feels like there are a lot more people talking than listening. I have definitely enjoyed building up my followers. And I try to scan the the perculating column of Tweets on my TweetDeck. But it's a lot; and most of it is shameless self-promotion with more volume than content. It's a noisy channel where some standout, but many more are drowned out in a sea of others' self- aggrandizement.

What about Linkedin and Facebook?

Unlike Facebook, Linkedin has always been about buisness. A place to post a CV and build a professional profile where old colleagues and potential new employers alike can check you out without having to contact you directly.

Accordingly, it should be OK, to reach out through its "back-channel" email function, right? A business channel should allow a certain degree of selling. Yes?

Maybe, maybe not.

Linkedin qualifies connections, and if you haven't worked with/or for somebody, it doesn't encourage direct contact. And of course people can choose who's correspondence to accept as well as reject.

Facebook shields users in a similar way. You have to be accepted before there's a conversation beyond the initial query.

In both cases, there's a bias towards people you used to know.

So if you're going to introduce yourself to "someone's friend", your motives should at-least appear to be social and not directly work related.

This of course gets to the root of Facebook's problem with monitization. While everybody wants to use it, nobody wants to be directly marketed to. The little ads on the side are OK. But how effective are they?

Early on, I linked this blog (business oriented) to my Facebook account. I got some cool responses. (cool like bordering on cold). There was a fair amount of push-back, as though I was talking business at a party where you're not supposed to talk about business. Say a church social versus a cocktail party.

I've since gotten rid of the link and people have warmed up again. On the other hand, I link to Twitter and that's where most of my visitors have come from.

Net take-away: OK to self-promote on Twitter, go easy on Facebook or you'll start getting dropped as a friend.

What about Linkedin?

Over the past year we've reached out to new business prospects through Linkedin. The results have been mixed. For every "tell me more", we seem to average two "thanks, but no thanks". And on a few occasions we've even gotten the automated "decline to accept" response.

So it's OK to connect with old colleagues, but be careful about how you reach out to new prospects. People seem to consider it only a semi-public forum and don't want to be sold to.

It gets back to the fundamental difference between old media and new media--between old ways of selling and new ways.

The old way is one message for everybody (or at least groups sorted by demographic), and not customized messages for individuals. Even if you make it personal, if your reputation hasn't preceded you, then there's a good chance your message will be rejected.

It's still early days for social media. But the cultural "rules of engagement" are already being defined.

One thing is clear, while all are good places to network, it's not clear yet which of these new platforms represent a lucrative channel for marketers.

Of course, there's only one way to find out, and that's to keep trying new approaches.

 

What 2 many agencies are getting wrong?

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Doing the ad agency consultant thing means I talk to a lot of agency CEOs, senior account people, creative directors, planners and the rest. I’m pretty much always asking the same questions and pretty much getting the same answers. And they’re pretty much all wrong for exactly the same reason.

What I’m asking is this… what makes your firm different and why should a given client hire you instead of another agency?

There are four answers I hear over and over…

  • "We create big ideas." That’s what creative agencies usually say.
  • The more strategic shops, say that they "understand consumer behavior."
  • The really strategic shops say that they "know how to solve business problems."
  • Finally (and my favorite) is “we’re storytellers”.

Whichever one they say, they then talk about how they engage consumers and build meaningful relationships with brands.

And I say, so what?

None of that is what it’s about.

Advertising (and by advertising I mean any paid messaging delivered in any channel, be it network, search or Twitter) is about one thing…

Changing consumer behavior.

It’s about getting more people, to buy more stuff, more often. Getting people to stop buying one brand and start buying another. And then getting them to keep buying your client's brand, even though some other brand is trying to change that.

It’s that simple. And I think many agencies have forgotten this.

  • If big ideas change consumer behavior, then great… But if they don’t, they’re irrelevant.
  • If understanding consumer behavior helps you change behavior, then awesome. But if it doesn’t, who cares?
  • You solve business problems? Really. Any problem a business has is a business problem. What a business is hiring an agency to do is change consumer behavior and sell more of their stuff.
  • And as for the storytelling thing? Yes, stories are an important way that people learn. And good stories stick. But if they don’t get more people, to buy more stuff, more often, then it’s just more wasted time and money.

I’m just saying…

Yes, positioning yourself is about doing things differently. But more and more, I think agencies mistake activity for results.

I know… ROI this, and ROI that. But if you create a message that changes behavior, the client will sell more stuff. And at the end of the day, that’s the only ROI anybody really cares about.

For the record, I think that big ideas, consumer insights, understanding business issues and telling stories are all part of the process. But they’re only means to an end. The end is literally behavior transformation. And if you lose sight of that, well… then you just become one more reason marketers say we don’t get it.

And that’s something that we need to change.

Quick, describe an airline ad/commercial you've seen lately. Can you?

I can still hum a few bars from Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue--United's longtime borrowed theme song--but I can't actually visualize one of their ads.

That said, I've read several JetBlue Tweets of late. Yes, tweets are ads.

But maybe I'm just weird. Too much time online, not enough in front of the TV. But I do watch TV. It's just that my wife DVRs through the commercials--unless I yell "stop" which I do when something looks cool (homage to my profession). Other than that, commercial viewing pretty much comes down to beer and car spots during football games.

So?

So is it any surprise that despite over capacity, the airline industry posted a combined net loss of $2 billion in the Q2 following $4 billion in losses in Q1? I don't think so. And I think mediocre marketing is a big part of it.

Start with "expectations". Creating and then managing expectations is what advertising & PR are supposed to do for a brand. In the airline category, Southwest has done the best job in recent years. Part of their success came from not over-promising and instead selling the concept of "Freedom" which was a nice way of saying "cheap". You knew going in that you'd be standing in those weird lines and came armed with your own food. Then you took off and landed on time.

They managed expectations down, and satisfaction soared.

Continental has also done a good job. And they've hooked me with their loyalty program. But that's a whole other subject. In any case, they don't disappoint. I know what to expect, I've bought in and keep coming back for more (miles that is).

The legacy airlines did pretty much the opposite. They continued to sell their old branding ideas while cutting back on amenities--as they hiked their prices. In other words they created high expectations and then under delivered.

People will forgive you if you warn them that they're in for a bumpy ride. They hate it when you promise smooth sailing and then deliver straight turbulence.

Job one for the legacy airlines is to get rid of the legacy branding. They need to honestly address the experience and manage down the expectations. They need to fundamentally change the value proposition.

They need to tell good stories that resonate... Maybe it's about making friends with the person in the next seat. Or about the flight attendant putting her kids through college. Or the fact that "at least you don't have to listen to the guy in front of you talk on his cell phone". Whatever it is, it has to feel real and not over-promise.

A few years back Jet Blue built a kiosk and collected real consumer stories. The communications that followed definitely resonated (and reflected the real flying experience).

All the airlines and their marketing partners/suppliers are talking to consumers. They know what people think about them. It isn't pretty. But it's a starting point. Go there. Manage down and then actually deliver. Expectations will begin to rise. Even soar?

Just thinking out loud.


More saving and less buying. But when they buy, they're buying into you?

A rash of new data is confirming what we already knew personally, or at least anecdotally, that U.S. consumers are saving more and spending less. This has significant ramifications for the economy that are probably beyond my pay grade. But the impact it has on how we market discretionary goods and services falls right in my advertising/marketing wheelhouse (how's that for mixing metaphors?)

So...

It's much easier to get somebody to buy something with a credit card they have no intention of paying off in the foreseeable future, than to buy that same something when they're actually budgeting for it. Expect less impulse buying and more comparison-shopping. For marketers it can mean more work for less money.

So be it.

I think it's going to be fun. I think we're going to have to up our branding/persuasion games and cultivate new approaches to creating engagement.

Details?

The marketer's first tactic in an environment of declining demand is usually to cut pricing. Problem is that rivals match or undercut them and the promotional environment becomes a barrage of Special Offers and "Save Now" messaging.

And unless you're positioned as a price/cost leader, it's a bad environment to be doing business in. Only Walmart and a given category's scale/efficiency leaders are properly equipped to win at this game. Discount retailers and the cheaper mass brands gain while enterprises who differentiate through innovation lose. Innovation after all is expensive. And if you can't charge more for it, you can't keep doing it. And there goes your differentiation--there goes your value proposition.

(Clearly Walmart has figured this out, they are after all kicking ass).

So what are we at the brand communications end of the value chain supposed to do? How do we shift to protect our client's pricing and ultimately reputation in this "new normal" economy?

We need to do less message pushing and more pulling.

Meaning, as opposed to pushing the message out to consumers through TV, banner ads, PR and the like... we pull people in via social media, SEO, editorial and whatever's next.

When people are spending less, they become more discerning. They'd rather find you, than you find them. Of course, by deploying tactics that build word-of-mouth and garner cultural capital along the way, you actually are going out and getting them. But they're not seeing it that way. They think they found you. And that's good. Because now you're doing business on your terms--and that means selling at your pricing, in your channels, protecting and promoting your value proposition.

This economy is going to up our game and force continued innovation...

  • Watch for more exclusive online channels that are "invite only" and may in fact allow for select discounting that stay below the radar.
  • Watch for new social media site "user groups" that robustly screen applicants and in the process create an aura of exclusivity that stimulates demand among the otherwise skeptical.
  • Watch for integrated approaches that deploy versions of both leveraged through the personal impact of brand ambassadors.
  • And stay tuned for ever-improving tracking/data mining technologies that give marketers the ability to better understand what their consumers are doing (correlating purchase data with content tastes--not just in-store and on websites, but in emails other personal communications channels).

Then we can pull consumers in. Maybe still pushing brands via the increasingly affordable industrial media channels, but then attracting them back to our brands with a story that feels individualized and meaningful.

These are my thoughts at the moment. And they're of course being acted upon at this moment by savvy marketers who have already figured it out--and in the process, leaving slower rivals behind. 

So back to the economic data... more saving and less buying? Great. Because when they buy, they're buying into us.

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A Remembrance of (Marketing) Things Past

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We’ve been considering several approaches for a client. These days I'm talking about B2B strategy, CRM and other online tactics. It’s a pretty specific issue we’re addressing. One approach is definitely cooler and more expensive than the other. I like cool. But I think I just caught myself. And I just figured out why.

I did it by remembering my very first client meeting--back in my creative department days. Which was a long time ago. And I don’t think I’ve thought about it since, ‘till now.

It was my first agency job. Not actually a job, but an internship, the summer after college. They were understaffed in the creative department so I was the acting junior writer on the McDonald’s Southeast account. And it was my first client presentation.

It was me and the Account Director. She was twice my age and in hindsight, quite patient and even nurturing. She had given the art director and I a brief and we’d done an ad. She hated it. But had agreed to show it anyway. So there we were—walking into a McDonald’s on the outskirts of Atlanta (not glamorous, but a start). I was wearing a suit and one of my two ties. I had one of those old style portfolio cases filled with what I was sure was a great ad.

The owner of the McDonald's was in the kitchen with his young staff, lecturing them on the state of the French fries. "They've been sitting too long" he was saying. "And too much salt". He threw them out and dropped another batch into the hot grease. We were standing back from the counter, by the table with the straws and napkins. He saw us and pointed towards the seating area. The Account Director led the way and we sat down at a table.

He came over and sat down with us.

"You know the problem right", he started. "They've got us selling these damn shrimp salads", and nobody's buying them. "You know how expensive shrimp is... it's god damned expensive. I'm ready to drop it. But it's political, know what I mean? OK, what do you got?"

I took out the ad: above a line-art drawing of the shrimp salad the headline read:

THERE'S SOMETHING FISHY GOING ON AT YOUR LOCAL MCDONALD'S.

He just stared at it for like 30 seconds. Then said: "it's a joke right?"

"No", I said, "this is a good ad. It might even win an award".

"I don't give a shit about awards. I gotta sell more shrimp salads; it doesn't even say 'shrimp', and fishy sounds like something here stinks. You'll have the god damned health department on me"

I argued. Then he said, "listen kid", if he didn't say kid, I knew it was what he was thinking. "I run this ad and it works great, we're happy. But if it doesn't, I'm out 10 grand of my own money for the newspaper buy and stuck with the shrimp salads. And question is, are you gonna pay me back?”

And honestly I hadn't thought of it like that. I'd just thought it was a cool headline and could put it in my book and be one ad closer to getting out of Atlanta and on my way to New York. But now I was looking at this guy, and it all felt different.

"OK", I said, "let me think about it".

"Good", he said, and he went back to the kitchen and we drove back to the agency.

On the way back the account woman didn't say anything. And I was staring out the window. And just before we got back on the highway, I noticed these signs for "Tube Rentals". I asked her what that was about. And she said that on weekends people rent tubes and float down the Chattahoochee River. That you parked in this massive lot, and then floated down the river and then the rental tube people picked you up in a van and drove you back to your car.

When I got back to the office I told the art director about it. Of course she knew all about it. She was from Atlanta.

"I'll bet you're hungry by the end" I speculated. "Drunk and dehydrated is more like it”; she said. It turned out that people drank beer along the way.

"So what about a free drink?" I said. "Free when you buy a shrimp salad" she said.  We called the account director and told her. Forget buying a newspaper ad. Just make a bunch of fliers and stick it under their windshield wipers, she suggested.

We went back the next day and showed him the flier:

YOU JUST CONQUERED THE RIVER, NOW CONQUER YOUR THIRST AND HUNGER.

GET A FREE DRINK WHEN YOU BUY A SHRIMP SALAD.

He loved it. It was practically free. And of course it worked. He actually sold all out of shrimp salads several weekends in a row. No awards though. but...

Several months later I was back in front of him again, except this time we were presenting to the Co Op board and we were showing a Happy Pale Meal campaign for the entire Southeast region (TV, radio and print). There were five or six other McDonald's owners behind a long table. The program was going to cost several hundred thousand dollars of their own money and they were all pushing back. Then the guy we’d done the shrimp salad thing for interrupted and said, ”if they say it’s going to work, it’ll work. I say we do it”.

And they did. And it did work. The campaign was picked up by other markets around the country. It won some awards. And a few months later I got a job offer in New York.

All right, so much for reminiscing. And I’ve got to get back to work now. But I know which approach we’re going to show. And when it works, we'll have the momentum and trust to do something cooler (and it’ll be right for that assignment), and that’s what this is all about. Right?

Advertising, fast becoming faster.

 

I’m thinking back a little more than a decade. In this flashback, I’m in my office, getting ready to leave for JFK—a nice view of Rockefeller Center visible through the half open blinds—I’m packing up my production folder and various reading materials for the flight to LA. My partner’s standing in the hall, looking at his watch. “The car’s downstairs dude”, he says. Meanwhile, there’s a senior art director from our group questioning me about the shoot we were headed for.

“You’re doing three spots in four days?” he said with a frown. “We used to take two weeks to prep and shoot one. I wouldn’t let the client get away with it. They just want to save money. You should demand more time."

“It’s plenty of time”, I think I said, and likely a little cockier than necessary (but that was a long time ago). “Besides”, I went on, “the work starts airing in like two weeks”. The older art director shook his head and slowly walked away, dumbfounded and annoyed by the faster pace the business was moving at.

Funny thing is that looking back, the gap between then and now is even wider then the “multi-week partying at the Beverly Hills Hotel” era he was then missing and the still TV-centric period of that moment 10 years ago.

That’s how things go, right?

Looking around right now, the explosion in new media has accelerated things exponentially. The websites, search, banner ads and blogs that felt so innovative a few years ago are already beginning to look more like traditional media in light of newer platforms and the hundred plus new aps a day equation that are all fighting for a piece of the media mix.

What’s my point here? It’s actually not just the technology that changes things. It’s not just about new media and new channels. It’s also about the ever-increasing tempo of communications and the mind-set that goes with it. To my mind, it’s speed that’s the real game changer.

We’re reading faster, and deciding what not to read, faster than ever before. We write faster and think faster. Bottom line, we decide faster. And crazy thing is: today’s “faster” is tomorrow’s “I can’t believe how long that took us”. For many I'm stating the obvious, but I know that many more still haven't come to terms with this newest "new".

Simple fact is that consumers’ appetite for input is absolutely insatiable. And what used to get 30 seconds worth of consideration now gets less than 7 seconds. If they like what we’re saying, great, you’ll get a few minutes. But that only means they’ll want more. And we better be ready to hit send when they ask for more. Because if we don’t, they’ll move on and the initial engagement we had disappears into a cloud of forgotten code.

For the record, I don’t think it’s an age thing. Lots of today’s innovators are well past Gen-Y. And I know plenty of 40, 50, even 60-somethings who are clicking from one link to the next, loading up their iPhones and bitching about something someone wrote on a blog. That’s actually the point. The market for the next “new” is huge and will consume what we give it and only demand more.

I guess my point here is that people who think it’s just about mastering the technology are missing the point. It’s also about mastering the tempo, and as I said, the mindset that goes with it.

Looking back to that exchange ten years ago, the point my old colleague was missing was that it wasn’t about the client being cheap or over-demanding. It was about satisfying consumers, who then, as now, wanted more. We we're just working with our client to deliver, before a competitor did. And in this way, nothing’s really changed. At the end of the day, we’re not keeping up with technology; we’re keeping up with consumers. They’re fast. And if we want to keep them happy, we have to be a little faster.

On your mark, get set, send!

If an ethnographer had followed me into the bathroom this morning

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Among other mundane observations, she would have noted that I spent about 20 minutes on my Blackberry before getting in the shower, and once in, shaved with a Schick disposable razor.

If she'd followed me to work, she would have also noted that I stopped at Dunkin' Donuts before getting onto the highway and then tuned the radio to 1130 AM for my hour-long drive into the city.

Boring and uneventful stuff, until you compare and contrast this behavior with what I was doing in the same time frame a year ago.

A year ago, I spent about 5 minutes in the morning on my Blackberry. Shaved with a non-disposable Gillette razor. Walked to the train station where I bought my coffee from the self-employed coffee woman. Purchased three newspapers (The NYT, WSJ and FT). And then settled into an hour-long ride with my newspapers--sans radio of course.

What are the implications for the minor differences in my morning routine?

    * Blackberries and laptops have replaced newspapers.
    * Disposable razors have replaced fancy looking handles with disposable blades.
    * A mega corporation is squeezing out the coffee dispensing little guy.

And if you look at economic trends, sales data and corporate earnings reports, the facts back me up.

When I woke up a year ago, I was only checking work email on my old Blackberry (a 5 minute endeavor). Now I'm looking at work and personal emails as well as texts, not to mention checking my Twitter and aggregate news feeds (actually reading pertinent stories right there before I get in the shower). Thank you 3G phone and social media. Sorry advertising sales executive at the newspaper companies.

Lately, I've been traveling more as the economy has picked up, which is how I fell into:

    * Using disposable razors (something in the past I only did in a pinch). But the newer Schicks are filled with innovation and just as good.

Last year I was taking the train, a cost-saving move given the then high price of gas. It's come down and I've settled into driving and in the process discovered Bloomberg radio--something I now feel that I can't live without it.

What do I take away from all this?

    * Higher gas prices should help newspaper sales (they should start giving away papers the moment there's a spike).
    * Likewise, lower gas prices should help radio (Satellite should come up with rebates and free trials the moment prices fall).
    * An improving economy and therefore more business travel should equate with new trials of disposable razors.
    * And, 3G phones and social media are completely shifting the paradigm (and that's a whole other post, and maybe a book).

If an ethnographer had followed me into the bathroom this morning and compared what he saw with observations from a year ago, he'd know that a year in marketing is an eternity.

Of course one didn't. My privacy is still in tact. My observations are purely rhetorical at the moment.

But if an ethnographer were to follow you in to the bathroom tomorrow, what would she see that's different from a year ago?

And what could you learn that would help you prosper in the year ahead?


On losing a sailboat race and what it reminds us about new business.

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As my 10-year-old and I entered the Jersey Shore yacht club this morning, I could feel the anticipation building.

Above us, the big American flag was snapping around on the pole promising a decent wind. And as we made our way past the empty tennis courts I could see the fleet of little boats coming to life.

We were there for the child/parent race the club holds at the end of the sailing season. It'd been on my calendar for weeks, but truth is I'd given little thought to it until the moment I saw the dozen or so Opties being rolled to the dock's edge and dropped into the water.

Now if you're not familiar with the Opti, you really only need to understand that it's a small boat, barely 8 feet long and designed for kids not weighing much more than 100 pounds. The fun of the race is that the kids run the course, then their over-sized parents swap places and squat and squeeze into the little hulls for their turn at the course.

Alexander and I got his boat rigged and in the water. Then I watched as he sailed to the line, maneuvered with the pack and then with the final sustained blast of the horn raced for the far buoy.

10 minutes later he came back and it was my turn.

And here's the thing. I struggled to find a comfortable position, which I never did. Was slow off the line, slipped into the middle as we neared the mark and then fell to near last as I made a messy tack round the mark and sloshed my way back, arriving only second to last.

I was mad at myself and shook off the congrats from my family for finishing. Losing sucks (even when it's something as ultimately unimportant as a little sailboat race) and I sulked around until the prizes were given and we headed home.

But here's the thing, why was I surprised?

Even though I could have practiced in the boat the day before I didn't. I could have asked the sailing coaches for advice about starting tactics and the best way to take the mark. I didn't. I could have talked to some of the other parents who've been doing this for years. But I didn't have a real conversation in that regard either. Instead, I fell back on my long past youthful memories of skippering Lasers and figured I knew what I was doing.

Obviously I didn't.

And thing is, again and again, I see companies do the same thing in new business meetings.

They don't prepare in a truly comprehensive way. They don't rehearse. They don't seek real advice. Instead, they focus on their version of past successes, reassure themselves that they know what they're doing and assume that success will simply repeat itself.

We all know better, but we don't fully prepare.

So on this Sunday night, as I take solace in the fact, that next year, I'll get another crack at it, and next year I'll do a better job of preparing... I'm also making a vow not to head into another new business meeting with anything less than a fully realized plan as well as the desire to win.

So... where's the PowerPoint? Line up the work. Who's sitting where? Who starts? Who follows? What's the one thing we want them to walk away from the presentation with?

Bring it on.

And next year, to the 17-year-old sailing coach, "how do I get the most out of this little boat?"

Now dim the lights and sound the horn!

What are the hottest three letters in advertising?

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New school media types might answer SEO. Older school types might say GRP. Just about anybody with a P&L to look after, probably answered ROI.

But did anybody answer CRM? If you did, you can stop reading right here, because you already know what I'm going to say. But if you didn't, and winning new business is important to you, you might want to read on.

Customer Relationship Marketing is way hot and here’s why:

For many years now, it's been widely accepted that it's cheaper to keep current clients than to find and close new ones. And via loyalty and rewards programs, CRM has proven its usefulness at extending customer/brand relationships and generating repeat business. But in our experience, CRM can do much more.

We actually see CRM as the core of an effective customer acquisition program.

For starters, there are numerous affordable sources for high quality contact information. Subscribe to the right database, and the names, titles, phone numbers and email addresses of the people you want to talk to are just a few clicks away.

For the marketing communications business, we're big fans of TheList. And most of the agencies we've worked with over the past few years are subscribers. But in our experience, these agencies under utilize it.

Sure you can look up a brand or agency, get a top-line on their business (revenues to media spend) and in most cases grab their phone numbers and email addresses. But the real genius of TheList is its compatibility with Salesforce.com.

TheList fluidly downloads to spreadsheets in seconds, which can then be uploaded to the Salesforce content management/prospecting platform.

From here you can craft and blast out hundreds of emails at a time (each partially customized) and all easily tracked. If you’re sloppy, you're doing little more than generating spam. But done skillfully, these email campaigns can initiate conversations and start you down the path to acquiring new clients.

This is the foundation of CRM outreach.  Of course, you need a comprehensive approach. You must tend your data (turning over your lists every three months or so). You also need to follow up in other channels (snail mail and phone). You also need to be building your presence online so that when prospects are intrigued enough to check you out (which often occurs before they respond to one of your emails), what they find is compelling enough for the conversation to continue.

Thanks to TheList and Salesforce, the technology is now affordable and user friendly. It forms the core. Build upon it with solid best practices and great content and you’re on the path to CRM driven growth.

And when it comes to those acronyms mentioned up top, we'd say good CRM gets the most out of your SEO, which then delivers the equivalent of high GRPs (people reached x the frequency with which people see the message) and ultimately leads to huge ROI. And what could be hotter than that?