12 Steps to Grow Diversity in Your Personal Network

Look at your network now compared to last year. Have you dramatically expanded the number of people you can call or email and be reasonably sure you'll get a response from them?

And that doesn't mean from loading up on contacts inside your company using the "People You May Know" feature on LinkedIn. A network gains value through diversity - not from having 75% of your connections riding on the same economic train as you!

If your active network looks the same as it did last year, ACT NOW when ideally you don't need your network's benefits. Here are 12 potential ways to add not only numbers, but diversity to your network:

1. Join and actively participate in professional associations
2. Regularly attend (and even create) networking events and follow up on connections
3. Take on leadership roles in church, school, or alumni organizations
4. Deliberately try to network with other parents at kids' activities
5. Write articles for publications within your industry
6. Speak publicly on topics of expertise for you (and if you're reluctant to speak, join Toastmasters and get over your apprehensions)
7. Use Twitter to build a global network of people involved in topics of interest (Twitter Lists or WeFollow are great places to start)
8. Run for public office
9. Find and join groups focused on hobbies you enjoy
10. Share your expertise via social media - start a blog, comment on other blogs, record podcasts or video blogs
11. Start a second job where you interact more with the public
12. Strike up conversations with people you meet standing in line

And IMPORTANTLY, have business cards with you and introduce yourself to new people with your first and last names. I can't believe how many people go to networking events and don't have cards and/or introduce themselves by mumbling their first names.

Not all of these methods make sense for everyone. For my networking strategy, numbers 1, 2, 6, 7, and 10 have all been very effective at meeting great new people both online and in IRL (in real life), especially by starting to attend and even organize tweet-ups.

There are certainly several of these that will work for you, so pick and get started adding diversity to your network! - Mike Brown

Out and About Marketing - Double the Fun, If You Follow the Rules!

The Baskin Robbins Double Header Cone screams, "I came out of an innovation session!"

That's okay though because it appears from the outside-looking-in to have a solid customer experience-based strategic foundation.

An ice cream cone allowing multiple flavors and formats side by side lets customers preferring cones experience them in a new, fun way. Who can beat two different ice cream flavors and formats (soft serve and scoop) the way YOU want to combine them, instead of randomly (mashed scoops), sequentially (scoops on top of each other), or in a forced swirl (for soft serve)?

It's fun for kids (who seemed to be the primary audience the day we were in Baskin Robbins) and probably makes a parent's life a little saner (since it helps more easily please a kid wanting multiple flavors). For Baskin Robbins, it creates some near term buzz and introduces a new, slightly higher price point to upsell customers who'd typically only buy a single cone.

Unfortunately, the poster's fine print clearly states "no substitutions." You can't have two scoops or two soft serve flavors. The Double Header cone "fun" doesn't extend to customer-driven innovation at the point of sale.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving (US-based readers), and be on the look-out for "out and about marketing" examples to share here! Brainzooming is taking a few days off and will be back Monday. - Mike Brown

Out and About Marketing - Making Buying Decisions Simpler

Product innovation is rampant. Great for providing choices! Crappy for having to choose from among them.

So it's smart product strategy for brands to remove uncertainty and apprehension by making decisions simpler for consumers. Interestingly, today's examples of doing this well both come from Sam's Club - home of having to buy more than you'll ever need to get a good deal (especially for a two-person household).

Shopping for cheaper deodorant, the main brand switching factor was getting a product smelling close to my current choice (or at least not smelling weird).

This sealed four-pack of Degree deodorant had a great per unit price. But who likes a great deal on 4 deodorants only to find out after buying it that it smells like perfume?

How to avoid this deal breaker? Ingenious marketing to the rescue!

This multi-pack included a scratch-and-sniff label on the left of the package allowing me to smell the deodorant before buying. It was close enough, and I switched brands.

Cyndi was getting an early jump on shopping for Christmas baking as she's planning to make hundreds of chocolate chip cookies (among other things). A pallet in the middle of one aisle featured a great buy on 72 ounce bags of Nestle Semi-Sweet "Morsels," the chocolate chips of Nestlé® TOLL HOUSE® cookie recipe fame.

She asked how many bags she'd need since the recipe called for 12 ounces of chocolate chips. Doing the math in my head, I looked over to the stack of chocolate chips to see the math clearly displayed on the packaging: these big bags are good for 6 batches of cookies each. Since math skills are probably declining at the same rate product proliferation is increasing, how innovative to simplify the math and create happier cookie makers.


And by the way Nestlé®, maybe you should up the recipe to 18 ounces of chocolate chips? That's 50% more in sales for you and even happier cookie eaters! - Mike Brown

Out and About Marketing - Coca-Cola and Ore-Ida Experience Marketing

Admission - I quickly grow impatient (yet only slightly unruly) in crowded stores.

Fortunately, my Flip camera has helped keep me out of trouble recently (kind of like Cheerios for geeky adults), creating amusement in finding great marketing strategy examples to capture.

To get you ready for the time spent in stores this week for Thanksgiving preparation and Black Friday, we'll share a few "out and about marketing" examples this week. Be on the look-out for ones you see and submit them as future guest Brainzooming posts!

Merchandising Can Be Experience Marketing

Why have boring grocery store displays when they can be colorful, fun, and create memorable visual experiences? These two stacks of soft drink boxes for Coca-Cola products are from two local grocery stores - Price Chopper (left) and Hy-Vee (right).



While the pumpkin at Price Chopper was just plain fun, the Hy-Vee display was a top-five highlight for the Kansas City Chiefs this season!

Taking the Experience Home

This product makes me both proud and ashamed to be in marketing.

Talk about turning a generic category (tater tots) into an experience for multiple audiences. These Ore-Ida ABC Tater Tots are innovation rock stars on multiple levels!

For parents, they combine two high interest experiences - learning and getting kids to eat. For kids who enjoy school, they're great fun; for those that hate school, it allows them to work out a little aggression on these dreaded Sesame Street sponsors. Plus, I love how easily you can imagine the idea coming straight out of a Trait Transformation exercise!

So why do they also make me ashamed to be a marketer?

Because they're tater tots! How much cool brand experience does it take to get ANYBODY, let alone kids, to eat tater tots? I LOVE tater tots, but they're not "trainer-approved." So how about applying cool brand experience strategy to vegetables and fruits that are less processed, less fun, and healthier! - Mike Brown

How a Category-Creating Jersey Deal Set the Stage for an Industry-Centric MLS Cup - Guest Post by John Digles

I met John Digles in June 2009 as he produced video interviews for the Business Marketing Association Conference. John's background is fascinating; he's an award-winning film maker whose work has gained critical notice, including at the Sundance Film Festival.

John is also founder of entrepreneurial incubator StrategyDeli and sits on the DePaul University Marketing MBA Advisory Council. As Chief Marketing Officer of XanGo, John implemented a number of innovative programs, including:

• Negotiating a category-creating jersey-front deal with Major League Soccer
• Creating the award-winning XanGo.TV social media site
• Leading an international marketing program in more than 25 markets

John's innovative track record earned him an invitation to address the WFDSA World Conference XIII in Singapore.

Sponsorships represent great marketing opportunities if approached strategically and with activation plans fitting a brand's business objectives. Today, John shares his perspective on how XanGo put together an innovative sponsorship program that's led to the brand being featured in tonight's Major League Soccer championship on ESPN.


Jersey-front sponsorships are a long-running international soccer tradition. Global corporations such as Samsung and bwin invest millions supporting top teams and showcasing their brands on the playing fields of the world’s most popular sport. But when XanGo, a 4-year old emerging nutritionals leader and direct sales company based in Utah, inked the first jersey-front sponsorship in U.S. Major League Soccer history in November 2006, it was the first of its kind in North American professional sports.

The innovative deal to place the XanGo brand on the jersey-front of Real Salt Lake (RSL) was a perfect fit for the XanGo healthy lifestyle brand and its reputation as a “company of firsts.” We faced risks, however, that come with introducing this kind of advertising. Some wondered if American soccer fans would accept a branded jersey, while others considered a direct sales company an unlikely sponsor.

Exploring the jersey sponsorship, we formulated an activation program designed to mobilize hundreds of thousands of independent XanGo distributors and “make every game a home game” for RSL. Reaching a new consumer constituency would provide opportunity for distributors to teach the business as they filled the stands and hosted their own events at local soccer matches.

XanGo rolled out with an advanced digital strategy and a branded web site celebrating the game and teaching soccer basics. Research showed the site became a destination for parents whose kids were discovering soccer and joining leagues across the country. Many of these visitors learned about XanGo for the first time.

XanGo distributors and employees made RSL’s branded kit one of the league’s top-selling jerseys. FIFA Soccer by EA Sports, one of the world’s most-popular video games, featured XanGo on the jersey of the game’s RSL team. And the XanGo Cup hosted friendly exhibitions between RSL and international soccer superpowers – and their TV audiences.

Measurement data showed the jersey deal became a key factor in boosting global brand recognition, web traffic, and recruitment.

Weeks after the XanGo sponsorship announcement, David Beckham signed with the L.A. Galaxy and global nutrition and direct sales company Herbalife secured the next jersey-front deal. Jersey sponsorships with major brands followed around the league, including BMO with Toronto FC, Best Buy with the Chicago Fire, and Amway Global with the San Jose Earthquakes.

Network marketing is a passionate, loyalty-driven business. As direct sales brands cut their jersey deals, distributors from each sponsoring company became more vocal and competitive in showing support.

Three years after the first jersey-front deal, Real Salt Lake and the L.A. Galaxy have reached the MLS Cup, taking two direct sales titans to the league’s biggest stage.

While the category-creating deal surprised some, the trend of direct sales sponsorships has aligned thriving nutrition brands with the game, increased consumer awareness of the business and converted millions of passionate distributors into active fans for Major League Soccer. - John Digles

Getting Ready for 2010: Planning in a Recession - Guest Post by Barrett Sydnor

Today's guest post addressing preparing for 2010 comes from Barrett Sydnor, one of the first guest authors ever on Brainzooming back in early 2008. I've worked with Barrett on various strategic planning projects over the past 15 years, including quite a bit of quantitative industry analysis and supply/demand forecasting.

Today, he's addressing the right marketing stance to have during and coming out of a recession:

Fortune Favors the Bold.

The Roman playwright Terence wrote that in the 2nd century BC, though Virgil often gets credit because a similar line later appears in the Aeneid. Terence was probably talking about the military strategy of some emperor, but it turns out that the sentiment applies to businesses—small and large—as they face figuring out how to plan for 2010.

A natural tendency when looking at bad or uncertain times is to hunker down, keep spending to a minimum, and stay with what you have done in the past. Natural, but maybe not smart.

A Hurwitz & Associates report found that 65% of small businesses that expected increased revenues during 2009 had raised or planned to increase marketing spending. Increased revenues were expected by only 30% of those who were keeping marketing spend flat, and almost half (41%) of those who were cutting marketing spend were expecting a decrease in revenue.

This correlates with a study done at Penn State after the 2000 recession. The authors say that using what they call “proactive marketing” can allow firms to improve both capital market and business performance during a recession. They cite increased marketing spending by P&G, Kellogg, Intel, and Wal-Mart during recessions—and depressions—as a way to grab or consolidate dominant market shares.

For sports fans, one way to restate “Fortune Favors the Bold,” is “The Best Defense is a Good Offense.” You might ask, "How did that work out for Bill Belichick and the Patriots against the Colts?" While the execution lacked, he had the science—and the odds on his side (discussion here, here, and here).

In planning, as in coaching football, getting the odds on your side is really is what you are trying to do. Being more aggressive with your 2010 plan may be the way to tilt those odds in your favor. - Barrett Sydnor

Getting Ready for 2010: 3 Real Life Planning Successes

I'm a proponent of spreading strategic thinking broadly in a company and not readily handing off strategy development to outside parties exclusively. Yet I've been a part of many examples where an outside perspective helped move strategy development ahead much more quickly.

Here are several examples you may be facing where it's good to get outside expertise:

Turning Talk Into a Plan

A small subsidiary's three-person management team was told to get a plan in place to show corporate management the company's direction. They had no planning process and only ten business days to deliver a comprehensive strategic plan. We brought in the Brainzooming process to develop an innovative strategic plan in one day. The output couldn't be simply a bunch of ideas nor could it be only a rote plan with little strategic insight.

Structuring a day-long session using question-based exercises allowed the team to answer questions about the business, participate in exercises to stretch strategic perspectives on competition and opportunities, and come back the next morning to make people and timing decisions on a tight plan to share with the operating president.

As non-planners, they wouldn't have been able to put together a coherent business plan in ten days, but they did understand their business and the general direction they needed to head. We combined their deep knowledge with exercises and facilitation allowing us to challenge and create a strategic flow from their answers. We delivered the best of both worlds - a structured plan reflecting their intent for the business with sound strategic logic and more innovation than they'd have ever brought to it alone. This experience demonstrated the clear benefit of the emerging Brainzooming process.

Stimulating a Management Team that Knows It All

We rolled into town to help a really experienced senior management team tackle annual planning. Because of their tenure and smarts, they knew the company inside- out. This knowledge rendered them ill-suited to solving a long-term growth challenge: as every idea was uttered, they "knew" why it wouldn't work for the brand.

During the course of a day-long planning session, I created a new exercise on the fly based on a brand in a very different industry sharing the same fundamental characteristics of our client. I asked the group to suggest how this other company could address the same challenge they were facing. All of a sudden ideas started flowing non-stop. We were able to take the concepts and strategically apply them to their business.

Left on its own to think strategically, the management team would never have reached an alternative look at its business. An outside perspective, unburdened by excessive detail was critical to identifying an analogous situation, providing an entree for innovative strategic thinking and implementation.

Doing the Thinking for a Distracted Management Team

We had a pre-scheduled planning follow-up with a management team who, since our initial session, had been charged with exploring a major brand contraction. Unable to convince them their new assignment should be the focus for our session, we instead spent time addressing the status quo scenario. Unfortunately, the status quo wasn't likely or compelling enough to command much of their attention and strategic creativity.

Frustrated by the lack of intensity while addressing the status quo, we wrapped the effort early. We told them we'd work on the status quo scenario, delivering 200 prioritized, fleshed out ideas and concepts within 3 days. Using several creativity techniques during the flight home, we generated really strong creative concepts for the status quo or, with some modification, for the alternative scenario also.

This was a great example of the importance of a balanced group in doing the best strategic thinking. The client's management team had business experience and functional knowledge, but was sapped of any creative energy it ever had. Bringing in outside talent for a creative spark was needed to turn lackluster thinking into vibrant, implementable ideas. - Mike Brown

Getting Ready for 2010: Tools to Improve Your Success

With 2010 looming and the importance of approaching the year with creative business and competitive options, here are links to a variety of tools to help if you're under the gun to get a successful plan completed.

A Foundation on Strategic Thinking

• An Overview on What Strategic Means, Who to Involve in Strategy Development, and a Few Strategic Tools

Creating a Strategic Focus

• Steps to Re-evaluate and Focus on Important Elements in Your Business


• Better Understanding What's Strategic in Your Business

Contingency Planning

• Thoughts on Dealing with Uncertainty


• Steps to Deal with Planning Amid Uncertainty


• Quickly Developing Options When Your Current Plan Isn't Working


• Having to "Wing" Your Strategy Because of Uncertainty

Updating Your Current Plan

• Re-checking Your Marketing Plan for Completeness


• Reviewing and Modifying Your Strategic Direction


• Updating a Marketing Plan Under Tight Resources

Implementing Specific Strategic Thrusts

• Generating New Ideas When You Need Them


• When A More Aggressive Competitive Strategy Is Needed


• You're Fighting an Uphill Battle and Need a Contrarian Strategy


• Developing a Low-Investment Marketing Strategy


• You Have a Turnaround to Fix

Wrapping Up with a Smile on Your Face

• The Ultimate in Flexible Strategy

Additionally, Trendwatching.com has released its briefing on "10 Crucial Consumer Trends for 2010" covering impacts arising from (among other things):

• Urbanization
• Fragmentation in what constitutes luxury
• Increasingly complex online presences
• A push for mass IRL interactions emanating from online networks

There are certainly other Brainzooming articles touching on these planning topics, but ideally this short list will get you jump started for current planning efforts you have to complete. - Mike Brown

Getting Ready for 2010: A Strategy Foundation - Guest Post by Keith Prather

Keith Prather is Managing Director of Armada Corporate Intelligence, a corporate business intelligence firm that functions as outsourced members of corporate strategy groups and consults with companies of all sizes on strategy and implementation. Armada is sponsoring this week of posts on getting ready for 2010 planning.

I've known Keith for nearly a decade and have worked with him closely on a variety of strategic and market planning efforts. Today, I'm excited he's sharing his professional perspectives on getting a better understanding of your external environment during this period of dramatic global change in business and consumer markets:


A critical component of a successful strategic plan is a well-established strategy foundation – a compilation of information and intelligence covering your industry, global markets, customers, and the environment. Particularly relevant this year is the need to produce an accurate economic forecast with meaning and relevance for the business. And given the uncertainty surrounding the global economy, this can be a daunting task.

Following the most basic tenets, forecasters need to identify the supply and demand drivers for an industry, and capture meaningful data describing the condition and outlook for them. Sometimes though the most impactful elements on a business are not what we think. Going to the expense side of the income statement and understanding the biggest cost items in your business will help determine the real key elements of supply – those you rely on.

For instance, one client believed steel (which was one of the company's top expenses) was the primary input for its business, with countless hours spent monitoring, forecasting, and negotiating steel prices. Energy costs, on the other hand, were not considered to have a material impact, and were lumped into utility and overhead costs. In 2008, however, consumption of oil-based resources drove prices up significantly. As a result, oil costs had to be factored much more directly into forecasting models to improve their accuracy. By not anticipating this significant change to the company's business mix, however, it was caught flat footed.

On the demand side, the challenge is more complex. While providing future economic insights for clients, several fundamental items seem to be driving things developments. First, everything ultimately circles back to consumers. You and I, spending money, drives more than 70% of the nation’s $13 trillion in GDP. Watching consumer spending, consumer confidence, housing, and several other metrics tracking consumer activity are useful in helping gauge future activity. One great aggregator site for basic economic information is the US Census Bureau’s Economic Indicator page.

There are some other great free aggregator sites providing solid current economic news and explanations of some of the items driving current activity. One of my favorites is the RTTNews Daily Market Analysis. We also pay a lot of attention to the Financial Times, CNBC, Wall Street Journal, and Global Insight for forecasting information.

For manufacturing, the Institute for Supply Management publishes one of the most accurate gauges of manufacturing activity, the Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI), on a monthly basis. You can read about the PMI in simple, easy to follow prose at the ISM website.

Calculating risk is also an important component to a well-done strategy foundation. With a wave of new legislation floating around in Congress, it is important for companies to use scenario planning in considering impacts of various regulatory actions on the company. From health care to energy legislation, companies will be hit with direct and indirect risks as a result. Using a system such as the Lockwood Analytical Method for Prediction (LAMP) can help in gauging which scenarios provide the greatest risk – and the greatest likelihood of occurring.

It can’t be said enough, a solid strategy foundation is the underpinning to a successful strategic plan. Woodrow Wilson once said: "We should not only use all the brains we have, but all the brains we can borrow." If you can’t build the strategy foundation in-house, it’s worth getting help to make sure that the business landscape is being accurately portrayed. Otherwise, you might be building a ship when what you really need is a bicycle. - Keith Prather

Getting Ready for 2010

My, how times change!

In the old days, I'd get twitchy if our planning group's attention hadn't turned to readying for the next year's planning by April with completion targeted for early September. Amid a changing business environment, however, those dates got progressively later until the prospect of nearly coincident planning left us unphased.

At the Frost & Sullivan event I participated in during the first week in November, attendees were asked who was still working on 2010 plans. Based on the large percentage of hands raised, it looked like many companies have pushed back planning efforts much later.

As a result, Brainzooming is focused on 2010 planning, providing tips and ideas to prepare your plan for what your marketplace holds next year. Here's what's coming this week:

• Tuesday - My Brainzooming Instigation buddy Keith Prather from Armada Corporate Intelligence will highlight approaches and tools to survey your external environment. Armada is sponsoring this week's Brainzooming features on 2010 planning, so beyond upcoming posts on the topic, check out the services Armada offers to help you get through this challenging business period.
  
• Wednesday - Mid-week, we'll feature links to more than 15 Brainzooming articles to support your planning efforts.
  
• Thursday - There are various planning environments you may face. On Thursday, we'll share stories of how Brainzooming has teamed with Armada Corporate Intelligence, using the Brainzooming approach, to successfully address frequent planning challenges.
  
• Friday - Previous guest author Barrett Sydnor of Sydnor and Associates will cover making investment decisions in this business environment.

If you're feeling really under the gun for getting your 2010 plan done on time with the level of rigor to help your business be more successful in 2010, get in touch with Armada today for help with an Idea Generation Session, a Plan Audit, or a Fast-Track plan building session. - Mike Brown

Brainzenning - Blue Tree

Brainzenning - Video moments of calm and reflection.

The Frost & Sullivan Marketing World 2009 Event - Innovation Challenges Roundtable

I "led" (and by "led," I mean "asked one question and got out of the way") a roundtable on innovation challenges at the Frost & Sullivan Marketing World 2009 event last week with a group of incredible marketers. The only challenge was taking notes fast enough!

The participants included Jeffrey Rohrs (ExactTarget), Andy Shafer (Elevance Renewable Sciences), Sean Cheyney (Accuquote), Steven Handmaker (Assurance), Kathy Zanzucchi (Microflex Corporation), Theresa Kwan-Zangara (Gallagher Benefit Services, Inc.), and Brian Krause (Molex). Here are innovation challenges the participants successfully addressed:

No Process for Channeling Customer Ideas

ExactTarget crowdsources product innovation ideas - 90% of enhancement ideas come from its user community. Additionally, an Idea Lab allows customers on the forefront of its product use to trial changes in a structured environment. (Jeff Rohrs)

Customer Perspectives Are Being Ignored

It's important for marketing to be involved with innovation and new product development efforts to help vet ideas. Without marketing introducing a customer perspective, there's an opportunity for gaps to develop. (Kathy Zanzucchi)

There's No Widespread Understanding of Innovation

Marketing can become more involved and help drive innovation by setting up company-wide training curriculum on innovation. (Sean Cheyney)

No Motivation to Share Ideas

One way to stimulate employee innovation ideas is making a full-fledged program of it, complete with a character (in the case of Assurance, it's "Ivan Idea"!), a convenient intranet-based way to submit ideas, and a $5 gift card for EVERY business process improvement idea submitted. Among 200 Assurance employees, 60% have submitted ideas! Every idea is reviewed, followed-up, and published through the work of a key middle management group. (Steven Handmaker)

The right kind of internal competition can be a stimulus for sharing proven ideas others haven't yet implemented. With a distributed marketing force, Gallagher Benefit Services uses national webcasts to prompt individual offices to share what's working for them to improve efficiency, revenue growth, and operations. Marketing plays a role in drawing out best practices from participants. (Theresa Kwan-Zangara)

Death by a Thousand Approvals

Sometimes innovation hinges on avoiding corporate inertia and simply starting before getting everything cleared. Social media implementation can be an example of this in more traditional companies. Get the kindred spirits in place, agree to the program goals and risks you're willing to take on, and begin. With social media especially, there may be a better opportunity to start and experiment within an agreed to framework that minimizes the potential for big gaffes. (Brian Krause)

Thanks to everybody for making it such a great information-packed session. For even more ideas, check out this previous Brainzooming post on dealing with ten common NOs in business inNOvation. - Mike Brown

More from the Frost & Sullivan Marketing World 2009 Event

Today's recap from the Frost & Sullivan Marketing World 2009 event, highlights presentations from two CMOs - Eduardo Conrado at Motorola (Broadband Mobility Solutions) and Chris X. Moloney at Scottrade.

Eduardo spoke on "CEO Expectations: How Marketing Must Drive Growth in Today's Economy." Among his key points:

• One downside of seeing yourself as a tech company is you lead with technology, not customer benefits. Comment - Every company is susceptible to this. When you're strong at a core capability delivering important benefits, make sure you don't get caught up in the capability and lose sight of potential changes in benefits your customers are seeking.
  
• In positioning new products, Motorola attempts to start with the customer perspective, followed by the Motorola solution, and then adding the product detail. Comment - This isn't revolutionary, yet this solid formula should be kept top of mind when working through positioning, messaging, and customer communications.
  
• Motorola attempts to find communities that have developed offline and create a place to host them online. And to add value, Motorola seeks to aggregate relevant content from multiple sources, including material from outside the company. Comment - Great reminder that a company's social media effort can benefit from going to where people are already being social and adding value vs. trying to lure them to a completely new place with unproven benefit.

Chris Moloney covered "Major Growth and Marketing Opportunities in the New Reset Economy," with metrics and search as important themes:

• Chris challenged sellers to work from the buyer's metrics to be able to best serve them. Comment - Amid the challenges many marketers face in getting a handle on their own metrics, it can seem daunting to consider starting with consumer metrics. Yet this theme is right on target, and has been echoed by other CMOs I've seen in the past 18 months, most particularly Keith Pigues at PlyGem. You have to understand what success looks like from the customer's view, particularly in B2B markets, to deliver the best possible value.
  
• Every marketer needs to understand search in some form, and it's a good area to get good at for the efficiency benefits in can create within your marketing mix. Comment - Search was a big theme throughout the day. Patricia Hursh, President and Founder, SmartSearch Marketing, did an informative presentation on free tools to better understand search traffic on your website. It's an area I'll be exploring more deeply given the predictability of search as a marketing tool.

Tomorrow, we'll recap the innovation roadblocks roundtable I facilitated at the conference, with some really cool ideas from the participants. - Mike Brown

The Frost & Sullivan Marketing World 2009 Event - Joe Batista

I participated in the Frost & Sullivan Marketing World 2009 event November 2 in Chicago, leading a round table on getting around innovation roadblocks. The next several days will highlight some of the many intriguing ideas shared during the day from great marketing practitioners.

Yesterday's Creative Quickie mentioned the title "Chief Creatologist" which belongs to Joe Batista at HP, who spoke on "Creating New Market Revenues in a Down Economy." I met Joe at a 2007 Frost & Sullivan event, and his case study-driven presentations at both events were tremendously thought provoking considering HP targets $3 billion in new growth quarterly from the approaches Joe shared.

He looks for business growth through discovering and exploring new areas to respond to clients' needs. His efforts center on going beyond a closed innovation model and exploring the company's research in new ways and looking beyond its boundaries for new opportunities:

• Joe highlighted techniques to help identify new growth sources, including thinking broadly about the available assets a company has, generalizing what the assets (especially technology) can do, and connecting organizationally-dispersed assets inside a company. Comment - These all tie to fundamental lateral thinking principles, stressing the real-life importance of being able to apply abstract thinking skills in identifying opportunities that would otherwise be missed.
  
• Look for pockets of knowledge and expertise inside your business and explore how they can be converted into new revenue streams. Comment - A great way to do this is to identify what BENEFITS your knowledge can provide and then think through what other parties are seeking these or related benefits.
  
• One more potential growth source? Growth arises from examining currencies you have available inside your company (i.e., what flows through your value system) and by making the boundaries of your company porous so ideas from outside can flow through it. Comment - Joe's remarks continually underscored the importance of being able to step away from detail and "get" the bigger, potentially underlying picture, whether it's inside or outside your company.

There's a lot behind these summarized comments. I look forward to trying to connect with Joe further and better understand the innovative approach he's bringing to business growth! - Mike Brown

BTW -This is the second anniversary of the blog's first post. No big deal in the posts this week, but it seemed like at least worth a mention. Look for the Brainzooming redesign and move to a Wordpress format in the very near future!

Creative Quickie - Recap Your Odds & Ends

Spare a minute to recall what stood out for you last week, looking for creativity triggers in your recollections. If you're on Twitter, they make for great fodder to tweet as well.

Here are some things from last week on my creative quickie list:

• Important relearning of the week? When introducing a new idea, deliberately put yourself in situations that require explaining it. It really helps refine messaging much more quickly.
  
• Most interesting strategy question of the week? "In ten words, tell me what creates profit in your business?"


• Most surprising street sign? This one below. Where, but in Kansas City, is there a 10 hour parking sign?
  

• A good deed that's usually appreciated: Invite an introvert to go with you to a networking function. (Or to paraphrase @trmndsblndtte: Help de-flower an introvert!) If you're an introvert and someone asks you to an event, accept the invitation!


• Greatest inspirational messages while walking down the street? These from the school at Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago.
  

• Most innovative job title of someone I met? "Chief Creatologist"
  
• Most reassuring development? Encouragement from so many great people. Now to figure out how to engineer it happening every week! - Mike Brown
  

Brainzenning - Up, Up, and Away

This is the first guest Brainzenning video submission. It comes from an email reader who captured this really cool video.

Starting Over, Part 2

I'm a huge fan of NOT starting from scratch. If there's a remnant of a leftover idea, approach, or possibility sitting around, I always want to begin there and get that much of a head start toward a final goal by incorporating what I've done before.

Earlier this year, long-time friend Vince Koehler stopped by while in town. Vince shared his approach on collateral updates: he requires his staff to throw out all the copy on a brochure that's being redone and start over.

The reason? Doing so forces strategic thinking and a fresh creative view of the program that's being marketed. There's the potential for tremendous innovation value since this is another way of forcing a different look at a familiar topic.

If you've got a project that looks and feels like a re-do, why not give this approach a try? Toss out everything that's gone before, and it will feel just like starting over. - Mike Brown

Creative Quickie - Take Some Time

Keith Prather and I attended the October 21, 2009 Central Exchange CEO Series luncheon featuring Beryl Raff, Chairman and CEO of Helzberg Diamonds.

It was an interesting talk, especially when she went off script, discussing challenges in her career, how she developed a specialty in turnarounds, and the first meeting with her new "boss," Warren Buffett.

The first audience question was about what type of atmosphere she feels fosters innovation. Her answer was one where the status quo is challenged all the time and people "talk about ideas."

There's your creative quickie: see how often you're challenging the status quo today (vs. settling for what's okay or routine) and notice amid the time pressures of business, if you're avoiding "talking" about ideas.

Don't rush to "just do something." Invest time in strategic thinking and challenge your world as it exists today. - Mike Brown