Brandable Me

Well, it has been some time between posts. It was summer, I had an art show and I was obsessed with finishing some paintings, have a look at http://pk2kart.blogspot.com to see my recent single-minded focus. 

My big learning over the summer was about consumer marketing. It is field where I have had very little experience as most of my career has been in government or government-funded environments. These have been largely business to business corporate communications models.

But this summer, I held an art show of my work over the last year - my severance and EI show I informally called it, but the public name was Reflections on Windows. Here's what I learned.

First, marketing is all about a differentiated brand promise. Well, I certainly learned that as a individual, being able to talk about my passion for visual art was an immediate differentiator. All of a sudden, I had a subject to talk about people in my network. In fact, they almost always bring it up in our conversations and meetings, asking what I am working on, when is my next show and how I find ideas or work with my materials. I have actually been quite surprised at the interest it has created. It's a little bit of buzz marketing almost every day.

Second, as I organized a show, I had to tell people about it. And here is where more consumer marketing discoveries happened. Like others, I have hundreds of email, Facebook and LinkedIn contacts. Well, I had to invite them and if they could not come, provide a web locations for them to look at the paintings in the show. As a result, one of the things I finally got around to was a blog about my paintings (see reference in first line). I have been delaying this for quite some time, but it was a necessity. And I needed some print products as well. So I had to design it, get it printed and distribute and then remind people, answer their emails and basically organize a campaign all about me!

As marketing needs to be measured, here's my assessment. On the failure side, my reception was a bust. I put it on Sunday, July 4. Big mistake, weekday evenings are the best, so next time it will be Thursday and I'm sure I will get out some folks. On the positive side, I may sell as many as three of the eight paintings, which would be great and about as good as I can expect at this point of my development. And now I have postcards that can serve as business cards, a blog and lots more people who know I paint and ask me what I'm working on. One of my discoveries is that for artists, having a show is really the litmus test of whether you are really one or not. Following both my shows (last year and this year), I had sales inquiries from people who did not even attend! It's just that in the public mind, if you have a show, you are somehow a real artist. I would have never found that out without doing it myself.

Overall, the show was a lot of work in many non-communications areas, but also in my own profession, teaching me the dynamics of branding and marketing in a way that could not be more personal. Thanks for reading!

Starbucks Part 2

In November 2009, I wrote about How Starbucks Saved My Life. I have just finished Pour Your Heart Into It by Howard Schultz, the man behind Starbucks as we know it today.

The first book confirms the story of the second, namely of how Starbucks has a positive working culture based on values that are embodied by staff. In my view, part of communications at any organization is to foster a healthy corporate culture. I also know how immensely difficult this task is. Staff are often the most jaded of all audiences, with some members choosing to be physically present but not put their heart into the organization, and if anything, take a perverse pleasure in beating up the company to anyone who will listen. Another huge challenge to corporate culture is when the organizational leadership does not live the corporate values. We have an innate sense of dishonesty and it is usually picked up very quickly by staff, who turn off quickly and for good.

Howard Schultz was able to re-imagine a company and instill it with lived values that meant a manager across the country was open to hire and mentor a person of a different gender, race, age and social background. And yet, it worked - saving his life. I find that inspiring and almost impossible to believe given what I have seen in so many other workplaces. I do not think there is any secret formula or magic bullet. It boils down to being genuine and honest every single day. And Starbucks' corporate culture seems to pass this test with flying colours.

At the same time as I admire Starbucks, I am conflicted by it. The conflict comes from admiration for what they have achieved, essentially changing the way millions of people view their coffee and spend their leisure time. At the same time, they have done this by adding an incredible premium to the product, which has now gone upscale. Nike has done something similar, taking what were mundane running shoes to incredible levels of style, performance - and astronomical prices. I admire what they have done and how they have done it, but I do feel that somehow the price point is separating us rather than uniting us. Perhaps I am wrong, perhaps I am asking too much of a company, but the discomfort is always there in the pit of my stomach.

Simplicity from Complexity

This week, I have been taking a deep dive into how my employer deals with its main audience - Ontario doctors. I have learned a lot. The main thing is just how complex and long the process is for those doctors.

Repeatedly during the meetings I have had with colleagues, I have told them that our job is to take the complexity of that relationship and turn it into simplicity for our audience. Having thought about it some more, I now believe that all communication fits this category. This simplification may be easy, but most of the time it is very hard work. I once had a boss whose mantra was hard writing makes easy reading. I think this is another take on the same message - what we do may be incredibly complex and hard to understand, but I am going to ensure that my audience understands it.

Think of any effective communication you have experienced, be it written, spoken, advertisement, movie, visual - what sticks out is that it is memorable and easy to understand. Somebody took a lot of time to think it through and work, rework and revise relentlessly to get to simplicity. The challenge is that in the course of all that work, we can suck the life out of the communication and rather than effective and simple, it turns flatter than a pancake.

I think the only formula for success is to stay focused on the audience. How is this going to be useful and interesting for them? Not being able to focus on one audience or not having a clear idea of the message are two common ways to go off the rails early and often. Not having enough time to do it right, not fully understanding the audience are other ways to lose your way. There are many pitfalls.

But out of this comlexity comes the simplicity of audience focus. It is essential, but also incredibly easy to lose.

So, keep on focusing on your audience and never get tired of bringing yourself back to them. It is the foundation (but no guarantee!) of effective communications.

Thanks for reading!

Why I paint and draw

My life has changed now that I have a job. I have now been back hard at work for a month. It certainly feels good and I have been even busier than ever because I had a whack of volunteer work on the go that I now have to finish off or wind down.

Which means that my passion for visual art has slowed down considerably. I just don't put pencil, pastel or paintbrush to paper or canvas like I used to. It's understandable and I don't really mind but I have to be disciplined to stay at it. So far, I have been pretty good.

What I have found over the last year is that I continuously surprise people when they find I am an aspiring artist. It seems out of character for me, so reserved and by the books. And certainly it has been a long time coming as I feel I have been in development for over ten years and only now feel confident enough to actually talk about it.

The irony is that art is a lonely pursuit, you need to spend hours by yourself to explore your vision of the world. And yet, it has helped me stay in touch with dozens of people. I actually have something to spam them about - and they don't mind! I can tell them about upcoming shows and they actually want to come (actually coming is another matter though).

It enlivens conversations and picks up my energy level along with my friends' curiosity. It has been a curious development. I never undertook art because I wanted to talk about it, I actually avoided it for quite some time. But now that I do talk about it, that time alone is actually helping me create a connection with more people. Funny how things turn out.

Thanks for reading!

The Next Career Chapter

Well, it finally came. After more than ten months, I received and agreed to a job offer. I start on March 1 doing communications for OntarioMD. It is one of the organizations I targeted from the beginning of my job search. It's a great fit and I consider myself to be very lucky and blessed.

My first feeling is incredible relief. It has been so long and in some ways taken so much out of me. It is easy to criticize those who are out of work for years or on welfare by the easy quip of just get a job. But long-term unemployment chips away at your pride and self-esteem. I felt I had a gift - the skills I developed for over twenty years. And yet, nobody seemed to want them. That was really hard. So imagine if you have not been working or doing well with your education - the ditch feels that much deeper to get out of. I have a better appreciation of how paralysis can sink in.

Following relief, I have become increasingly happy to be able to get back. Again, I feel I have a gift to give through my work and now I have a chance to do that. It's what I really want to do.

Finally, I tried to make it a point to thank everyone who helped me out with leads, suggestions, advice, encouragement, presence or prayers. It took me most of a week to send messages to everyone. So I am amazed at how many people tried to help me and be there for me. It is a great feeling to know that you are not alone during tougher times.

Finally, I know that diving into the day to day challenges of my new job will lead me to forget some of my lessons. I hope that some wisdom will remain from these months. In many ways, it was a wonderful sabbatical and I am happy at the way I used my time, the things I did, the skills I learned and the people I met. I hope I can cherish those memories and learnings for a long time. I'm not quite sure how to do it, but I know it's important.

Thanks for reading and for helping me to this new starting point!

The Evolution of Job Search

I have been job searching for 20 years - but only sometimes... I have been thinking about how things have changed, both in obvious and more subtle ways.

During those years, like most things in our world, technology and the Internet have brought about massive change.

I remember looking for my first Toronto job by buying newspapers and scouring the Career sections. I would post my applications by snail mail. Of course, specialized niche services existed, the one I used from IABC was a weekly telephone recording. I remember dialing in and then going to brush my teeth because it took so long to get to the actual listing.

During the 90s, Workopolis emerged as the online search go-to site. I imagine it still remains the leading website in this category. But certainly, competition has arisen, especially from Monster. I have been discovering a new category of sites during my current job search above and beyond the largescale and niche job posting sites. I call them 'agregators' because they search jobs posted on other websites, such as job sites as well as thousands of organizations. They are quite good at going further into the job market. Still, some job postings do not get picked up, for instance if the description is a PDF.

What I find most interesting is that for the first time, I am paying for an online job search service, which is an agregator, Ontario Job Watcher. It provides value for my spending, sending me a daily email with links to an average of 30 jobs/day. Usually one or two are interesting for me. It is the only online service for which I am prepared to pay out of my own pocket. I learned about it from someone who used it during his recent job search - but it is not well known!

Related to this development is the fact that all my applications are now done by email or online. The online process can be protracted and painful. I have spent up to half an hour setting up an account and filling in all the fields and adding attachments. An increasingly common question on these forms is where did you see the job posting for which you are applying. None of them has ever listed Ontario Job Watcher! So I am ahead of the curve in my job search.

What lies ahead? Clearly the online sophistication is growing with niche job boards being created and a number of them obviously thriving. The agregation of job possibilities for job seekers is relatively new and is likely to continue to grow and evolve. Where the power of the net has yet to have full impact is customizing job search. The websites' search engines usually generate hundreds of responses for me, most of which are irrelevant. My prediction is that refining the search criteria based on jobs that are genuinely of interest will be the next big thing in employment search.

Thanks for reading. Let's see if I write an update to this post in a few years!

Making Sense of Blogging

This week I discovered two fascinating blogs, both through newspaper articles, which shows how retro I still am...

They are www.booooooom.com and www.365fashionrehab.com

I am fascinated by them because they are successful blogs with large readership, which I find amazing as I am still trying to figure out why anyone would visit a blog regularly.

The obvious reason for a blog's attractiveness and success is that the writer is well known. It could be a politician, sporting figure or someone in a niche. I like reading Seth Godin on Facebook, but don't do it nearly enough. I can't be bothered to visit regularly even though I know I should as he is brilliant.

And beyond the celebrity appeal? Why do people visit blogs?

The first reason, as with all effective communications, is a great story to tell. The Fashion Rehab blog is one of these. The two writers are taking a year from fashion shopping for themselves. Their site is successful in numbers AND that they have advertisers, which is in some way the ultimate seal of approval. Amazingly, they are writing every day, posting polls and keeping the site incredibly active. They have an engaged audience and it will be interesting to see if they morph into something else when their year is over or if this is just a one-year-wonder. I hope they come up with something to keep things going.

The Booooooom site is more fascinating. It is a Vancouver artist's posting of interesting visual art that comes his way. Started little over a year ago, he now has an enormous following and ad agencies worldwide are scouting his site for talent and artists, again from far and wide, are begging to be included. It is different from most blogs in that there is almost no text, it is pretty much all visual. This is the most fascinating blog for me as he is not telling a story, was not a celebrity when he started, but has hooked into something that has been hugely successful.

And to be fully honest, I am also jealous of the blogger. I am also a big art lover and aspiring artist. I feel as if I could have done this, but never pushed myself to think about something this creative. This is definitely a blog I will visit very regularly and is the only one I have bookmarked right now.

So despite the fact that I write my own blog, I am a bit of sceptic of their value. Largely, this is because I cannot quite understand how blogs can possibly work for any extended period of time and what is the mechanism that draws people to visit and return. Because of these two blogs, I am starting to glimpse at the answers. This is pretty important as I can understand the dynamics of Facebook, YouTube, Podcasts and even Twitter, but blogs already are getting pretty old school in the social networking world and I have been scratching my head.

Blogs are here to stay, there is no doubt, but understanding how they attract an audience and advertisers is the real key to gaining full communications value. I hope I am learning!

Thanks for reading!