A while back, I called in one of my teams (information architect/writer, programmer and designer) and told them we had a new project. They were eager to sink their teeth into it.  I said, before I tell you about the assignment, I have to warn you that the client will be very difficult to deal with and a real micromanager. They didn’t care and kept pushing to learn who the client was. I said “me”.  I knew myself well enough to know that I needed my website changed but that if I took the helm, we’d never get the job done – plus, I’d drive everyone crazy (including myself) trying to micromanage the project. (This same situation arose when I started writing my book, alone. I wrote and re-wrote the first chapter for at least three or four months and was just stuck at that point until my co-author came aboard and said, hey we’ll go back and fix it later, let’s just get the whole thing down on paper first – which is what we did).

My team took the assignment, gave me specific tasks to do and otherwise went away and came back with a really nice product. I knew they would do that – so I just stood back and let them make the changes what needed to be done.

Maria Moraca touches on three key areas to work on in her blog: http://ht.ly/kULcZ

It’s a brave new world we are seeing and must work within. As an evolving story, we have to consider how online advertising will be affecting the consumer’s brain? Neuro-marketing research is already investigating the effect online neuro-marketing will have on our brains in the current and evolving Internet/PDA world.

As we have recently discussed in a previous blog, researchers have learned that when the consumer first receives a message, it hits a section of the brain called the Nucleus Accumbens (NAcc). This is the reward/punishment, pleasure/pain “headquarters” of the brain. By evaluating the amount of activity in such demarcated brain areas, the prefrontal cortex and the insula, neuro-marketing’s use of FMRI (Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) is working on a process to foresee how a consumer makes shopping decisions. For example, if the NAcc indicates a positive desire response from a brand message over a more negative doubt response –“Should I be spending money?” then the pre-frontal cortex could believe that it is getting a great deal and making a wise choice (such as better prices, bonuses, and other personal satisfactions).

Drawing by Art Winters

Neuro-marketers are seeing the possibilities of using FMRI to examine and better understand the workings of consumers’ brains.
With this new knowledge they hope to develop new ways to initiate and stimulate consumer wants and needs. Don’t forget that it has always been marketing’s purpose to stimulate the consumer’s cravings and increase AIDA: attention, interest, desire and action.

If this concept makes you feel queasy, what kind of debate might occur if companies/brands have more invasive ways to communicate to and influence consumers in how to respond to a brand’s image, its brand story, and its brand positioning for superiority???

What kind of society will develop if this becomes the normal practice rather than a seemingly science fiction prediction?

OMG – What’s Next??? We may not be LOL’ing for long…….

Arthur & Peggy Winters co-teach SXB 200 Brand Marketing Communications for Image & Meaning and SXR 050 Intro to Branding: The Art of Customer Bonding.

Have you heard about WordPress?
If you haven’t you are

1. Not living on Planet Earth
2. Not reading this page which was made using WordPress

WordPress is one of the most versatile and user-friendly web publishing applications. It has been enjoying rapid and widespread use over the past few years. Find out how easy it is to make web sites, change or create themes, add plugins and expand your offerings to clients – or maybe you just want to create a new web site for yourself.

Do all of this without having to know a lick of code!! How crazy is that?!?!?

Learning WP is a skill that you can hardly live without in today’s world whether you are just making a web site or are going to work for others.

And besides. Its too much fun.

Here is where you can get started learning something that is fun and useful.

Details And Registration

For questions about this class contact Bud Kraus, bud@joyofcode.com.

Bud Kraus teaches CTD 600 Web Design: HTML , CTD 605 Web Design: Cascading Style Sheets, and CTD 613: WordPress.

And this is where you, as a small business, have it over the big guys. Large companies are so invested in a point-of-view (usually management’s point-of-view, not that of their customers) that they can’t make an adjustment to respond to the information in front of them. Imagine being at the helm of a huge cargo ship and having to make a u-turn in a space as wide as 42nd St.  Not only is it not easy, it’s almost not do-able.  So when situations come up that require a quick response to get to the market, the big firms are basically out of luck. Which leaves lots of room for you … if you’ve done your research properly.

Check out Isaiah Adams’ post and how research can help you … and hurt you if you’re not listening to your audience.

http://blog.optimizationgroup.com/bid/281279/

It’s also about losing focus on the prize – moving your business forward – while distracted by the dazzle – the allure or promise of raising capital any way you can.  The article details what’s legal and not legal in the world of raising money for your company.  I hope you use it as a guide to do your fundraising the correct way so you can avoid the fate and outcomes (jail time?) of this unfortunate company.

http://holtzmancom.com/teamwork_latest_news.php

Date: May 3, Friday
Time: 5:30pm-7:00pm
Location: Katie Murphy Amphitheater

Tickets: www.fitnyc.edu/BARK

Watch videos of previous shows: https://www.youtube.com/user/FITProfStudies

Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BARKPetFashion ]]> http://blog.fitnyc.edu/hottopicsinsider/2013/04/25/fits-5th-annual-pet-fashion-show-bark-a-porter/feed/ 0 http://blog.fitnyc.edu/hottopicsinsider/2013/04/24/licensing-class/ http://blog.fitnyc.edu/hottopicsinsider/2013/04/24/licensing-class/#comments Wed, 24 Apr 2013 17:34:34 +0000 Sandra Holtzman http://blog.fitnyc.edu/hottopicsinsider/?p=5765 Great line-up of expert speakers for my licensing class which starts tomorrow!

Licensing is a great source of primary or additional income for your product(s).  Learn the basics about how to navigate the world of licensing in four weeks!  And get the lowdown from people who live licensing!

My guest speakers this term will be:

David Kalow – An Intellectual Property attorney with fashion product experience
Arnold Burstein – A Licensing Agent who knows all the in’s and out’s of the licensing world and is the Chair of the NY Chapter of the Licensing Executives Society
Serena Godwin – Licensing Manager, Natori and (surprise guest speaker?)
Nathan Fleisig – An FIT faculty who specializes in licensing names and products
Outerstuff:  Director of Licensee Global Social Compliance, and an FIT faculty member.

It’s not too late to register!
CEO 035 (55A) Licensing
Thurs., April 25, May 2, 9, 16
6:20-9:10pm

There was more of an exchange on multiple topics and again near the end I made a suggestion…” remember, if the audience interrupts you with questions go with the flow and answer them. Don’t worry if you don’t get back to your presentation. This is more important.” So many presenters answer a question (some don’t even do that) and instead of going back and giving the audience (in the case of investors, they are usually the ones directing the conversation) your canned presentation, let them lead you to where their interests lie. First, it shows you are flexible and connected to the conversation. Second, is says that you are not rigid and insisting on the presentation. The purpose of being prepared is so when this sort of thing happens, which is virtually all the time, you can go with the flow.

More useful tips are offered by David Holloway, management consultant http://sangira.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/WPPDF-Entrepreneur-Pitching.pdf and by Entrepreneur with some serious tough love advice http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/201826

Fashion advertising has always been more visual than verbal, which may play into its favor in the current, highly visCOMual marketing environment. We are seeing a trend in this mega-media environment for marketers to be involved in a heightened sense and use of visual literacy, visual thinking, visual perception and visual communications.

It has been our practice in our teaching and in our marketing and brand consulting to stimulate thinking by refashioning some of the terminology. It is our way of encouraging our own team and other participants to stop, think and apply the concept being presented through a new and different term such as visCOMual.

As in this case with visCOMual, we have noticed the need for more arresting visual communications in our digital, instant messaging world. To emphasize the importance of applying this to our clients’ branding messages, we created our own word for these innovative communications. Stop, think and recognize what is going on around you – what are you noticing about the visual communications you are encountering in your life? Even though the visualization of fashion has long left still-form, “proper” posing, as in the Levi’s ads of the 1950’s (seen here), to keep up with our own human evolution, there is certainly a need for the creation of effective matrices for this newly defined visCOMual process.

1950’s Levi’s version of visual communications is “proper posing”

The visual literacy process can present fashion modeling with language as unique as the product design. There are advertising/brand managers and catwalk directors who are working on nonverbal languages of their own. Their intent is to grab attention with this new imaging language and visual meaning newly applied to their brands. They may now create a mind’s eye matrix for visCOMual that correlates visually with elements that are: emotional, rational, imaging, associative, symbolic and/or cultural, as in the Levi’s ad of today. The goals are to engage the customer’s seeing eye, the cultural eye that perceives the inner-mind or “my-style” eye, and/or creates a video-eye that records in the must-have, shopping mind.

2013 Levi’s visCOMual – new-world posing and connecting with the Levi’s customer of today…

The positioning of visual communications for designers, brands and retailers is to encourage additional purposes for our ever growing and changing technologies. We are all working to create new areas of communication that can provide: product information—knowledge, self-design aspiration, increased meanings, and unique expression in our new visCOMual languages…

Drawing by Art Winters

What strikes your mind’s eye?

Arthur & Peggy Winters co-teach SXB 200 Brand Marketing Communications for Image & Meaning and SXR 050 Intro to Branding: The Art of Customer Bonding.

So now that we’re ending the first quarter of the year…here’s some helpful directions to focus on in your marketing and business (they are in no particular order of importance)

1.       Integrate your marketing
As much as everyone would really love “the answer” and that it be just one thing…social media is the “one” at the moment…that’s just not how marketing works. Marketing is an eco-system that includes social, PR, collateral, branding etc.

2.       Put in a call to action in every piece of marketing you do
This may sound self-serving but it actually helps direct the customer to the key next steps in order to buy your product or otherwise engage with you.

3.       Create content that is valuable to your customers
This includes helpful tips and case histories that will help move the prospective forward to become a customer.

4.       Communicate
Tweet, blog, get your voice out there and heard.  I posted a jobs graph from another source a while back and suddenly it’s been “Pinned” by dozens of people on Pinterest. Who knew?

5.       Do primary research with your customers
Ask them open-ended questions about what’s important to them about your product or service and what will drive them to buy it.

6.       Listen to your customers’ answers
The information may be different from what you expected. Welcome the face that you do not know it all and keep your ego out of it.

7.       Follow-up after the sale
Thank your customers. If they have feedback (which you should solicit) listen to it and if something is wrong, make changes or otherwise implement their feedback.
Follow-up again.

8.       Identify your influencers
Build a relationship with them either on-line or in person.

9.       Brand yourself, your product, your company
Remember, you are your brand.  Use experiences and stories to help with brand identification. Your customers will also help you create your brand.

10.     Write better subject lines
It’s a crowded, competitive world out there…make sure your communications are opened.

Sandra Holtzman teaches CEO 035: Licensing.
She is the author of Lies Startups Tell Themselves to Avoid Marketing.

Thinking of taking an online class, like my Web Design class, here at FIT?

Let me give you some reasons that you will not see any where else on why learning online just might be fore you.

1. You can eat anything you want in class. Order a pizza and a coke and spill it over your keyboard. No one will tell you that you can’t have food in the lab.
2. You can wear anything you want. Fashion is totally up to you when you take an online class. Work in your T-shirt or even a little less.
3. When you get up at 2am, rather than eat a piece of chocolate cake, you can feed your brain with something good to learn.
4. Didn’t swallow a bottle of Scope just before class? Not to worry. Bad breath is not a problem.

Some Online Classes that start soon
CEO 003: Formulating Your Financial Strategy
CTD 361: AutoCAD I
CTD 525: Interactive Design for Tablets and Smart Phones
CTD 600: HTML
SUS 001: Introduction to Sustainability
SUS 032: Sustainable Design Technology
SUS 041: Sustainable Product Development II
Click for all Online Classes offered

Bud Kraus teaches CTD 600 Web Design: HTML , CTD 605 Web Design: Cascading Style Sheets, and CTD 613: WordPress.

I’m sure anyone who really wanted to record that movie illegally could.  And probably did.

This situation reminded me of airport security.  We are all willing (and to differing degrees, happy) to give up our rights and privacy, and possessions in order to obtain something.

While the above is a common but somewhat extreme example (although I was the only one in the theater that seemed to think it was extreme), we willingly give over personal information – and take that of others’ – in the name of a contest, gaining access to something, etc. on the internet all the time.  How many times have you been given the option to log on to a new site using your Facebook, Linked In, Google or other social media password? As a business owner, how often have you been told to run a contest/sweepstakes/drawing in order to build your database?  I won’t do it. And if that’s the only option to obtain access, then I will forgo entering the site.

Big Brother is alive and well but here’s the question – how far will YOU go with YOUR products or website?  What an absolute marketing coup it would be to have a website that was exclusive and didn’t “share” information.  Sure, you couldn’t build up the numbers on your database quickly.  But the folks you will have on your database will be much more valuable.  And you also weren’t giving your database and your personal information away.  As a business, how much do you protect your customers’ privacy?

Something to think about.

Sandra Holtzman teaches CEO 035: Licensing.
She is the author of Lies Startups Tell Themselves to Avoid Marketing.

———

Client Acquisition Strategies for Startups
Educational Lecture Events – Thursday, 3/21/13

Sandra Holtzman, Serial Entrepreneur
David Schmidt, Strategic Advisory Services

When:
Thursday, March 21, 2013
5:30 PM to 8:15 PM

More info: http://www.angenadvisors.com/8.html

Sandra Holtzman teaches CEO 035: Licensing.
She is the author of Lies Startups Tell Themselves to Avoid Marketing.