What I learned from working in a nuclear power plant...work boots

Now, I thought I knew what work boots were. I have a pair of sturdy hiking boots I wear all the time. However, a friend of mine, who used to work for the BNSF railroad, offered to lend me his work boots. I will be required to wear steel toed boots on this job. I will be working on the "turbine deck" where everyone is required to wear steel toed boots, a hard hat, safety glasses and ear plugs.


I was warned to not get those cheap steel toed boots from Walmart. My shift will be from 6:00 PM to 6:00 AM. Twelve hours, 6 nights a week (with the potential of going to a full 7 day week) on a concrete floor. This is not a place for $70 boots. I was encouraged to spend the extra $100 for a good pair.


$170 for a pair of boots that I will wear for 6 weeks, then probably never wear again?


I called my friend from the railroad and asked if he could lend me his boots ASAP. I figured, twelve hours on a concrete floor is no place to be breaking in a pair of boots either.


Once my friend handed over his work boots to me, I was full of wonder and intimidation. These things must weigh 10 pounds each. They laced about half way up my shin and felt like Frankenstein shoes. Hard to walk in ....clump ....clump ....clump.... But they said "Red Wings" on them and from what I've read on-line, these are the best.


Suddenly, my years of experience in marketing were failing me. This was no place for a marketing, white collar guy. I was entering the world of the working men. Men who had tattoos back when men had tattoos, not musicians and drama majors. These were guys who were missing digits and called them "fingers" and "toes" not "digits." These were men who wore boots that weighed as much as a spare tire.


Next lesson? Learn to walk in steel toed boots and to look like you've done it all your life.

James Snider is the business development director for Accelerant Marketing Alliance, a full-service marketing start-up providing a corporate marketing department....one hour at a time
For more information on Accelerant: http://accelerantmktg.com 
For more information on James: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jamessnider

What I learned from working in a nuclear power plant

As a consultant, sometimes you are called upon to perform duties outside your normal scope. If someone knows you are available and they need anyone who is not a complete idiot, sometimes they will call.


I had just such a call recently. Seeing as business is slow right now and the caller is a friend, I accepted the job.


In about a week, I will start a 6 week stint as a safety supervisor at a nuclear power plant. I will be leaving the great state of Texas to join a team that performs maintenance on a wide variety of power plant equipment. It will be my job to make sure they are following all the safety rules, all the time. 

I have started reading endless safety manuals so I will know things like “4) Wear Kevlar gloves when using utility knives, and scrappers.” Honestly, I did not know that there was such a thing as “Kevlar gloves.” But then, the writer of the manual did not know that the comma before “and” was not necessary, so I guess that makes us even.


I am not sure what I will learn about “marketing” from this experience, but I tend to find grist for the mill in just about every circumstance. This will be a unique experience for me, for sure. Whatever I learn, I will share with you on this blog.


Now, the most important thing for me to learn is how to say “nuclear.” Saying “nucaler” might be OK in Texas among Texans, but it will not do a lot for my credibility once I set foot on power plant property.

James Snider is the business development director for Accelerant Marketing Alliance, a full-service marketing start-up providing a corporate marketing department....one hour at a time
For more information on Accelerant: http://accelerantmktg.com 
For more information on James: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jamessnider

What I learned from Beer Marketing

Back in 1971, beer marketing took a major turn. The problem with American beer was, it pretty much all tasted the same. That is before Sam Adams, pale ales or the other beers which are distinctly different than "old school" American beers like Bud and Miller.  

These "mainstream" American beers were (and are) made from the same ingredients, using the same process, yielding the same results. Tastes test have consistently shown that beer drinkers who are fiercely loyal to one brand can not tell the difference in blind taste tests. How could marketing executives get the consumer to switch brands? 

Most traditional beer ads promoted the superior taste of the beer. Other ads generated interest with a comely female actress or used a star to build a "cool" factor about the beer. The ads, as you would suspect, were all about the beer.

At one time, Miller beer promoted themselves as "The Champagne of Bottled Beer." This had something to do with the extra carbonation in Miller beer but it was also an attempt to promote the "superior taste." This helped them to carve out a niche with people who liked beer but found it socially beneath their status or preferred other alcoholic beverages. 

What Miller discovered was that they were being successful with this niche market but that their target audience only drank a couple of beers from time to time. The real beer drinkers were the blue collar folks who drank beer all the time and in large quantities. If they could re-brand themselves to appeal to the working class "Joe 6-pack", they would increase sales significantly.  The term "Joe 6-pack" was actually coined by the advertising industry as an reference (albeit an unflattering one) to this average beer drinker.

In 1971, Miller started showing TV commercials depicting guys leaving construction sites and using the tag line, "If you've got the time, we've got the beer" and "It's Miller Time!" These commercials were very successful. They focused on the beer drinker and not the beer. That was huge. Beer drinkers (who felt somewhat marginalized in general) started buying Miller.  I remember when I was a carpenter, occasionally I would hear someone say, at the end of the day, "It's Miller Time" and everyone knew what he meant. 

This was so successful, that Budweiser (the number one selling beer) started running ads that said "For all you do, this Bud's for you." A powerful new age dawned where the customer, not the product, was the focus. 

James Snider is a marketing consultant, responsible for developing the 3.4 billion dollar 1394/FireWire market. James has over 16 years of marketing experience with 7 years working for Fortune 100 companies, 8 years as executive director of a non-profit and, since the summer of 2009, as a strategic business development consultant. www.linkedin.com/in/jamessnider
 

It's a tough call

I was discussing a recent marketing project with an old friend. He is about as "black and white" a person as I've ever known. After attending law school and passing his bar exam, he practiced law for one year and quit. The whole legal system was too crooked for him. Judges were too influenced by whether a particular attorney threw good Christmas parties and had a good deer lease. He felt that preferential treatment was given to the attorneys who were good schmoozers. 


In that respect, my friend is very much like the most technical engineers I've had the pleasure to work with or the misery of working for. 


When I told my friend that I'd taken on a physician as a client, he was aghast. Back in his day as an attorney (one year), it was considered unethical to advertise. That would go double for a doctor! A  person should not select a doctor based on good marketing but on whether or not they are a good doctor. If you read my post on engineers and social media, you will see similar logic. 

I explained to my friend that what I was doing was helping this physician to communicate better with people who needed her services. I was determining what made this doctor unique and helping her to verbalize it clearly. She specialized in certain treatments and not others. As a result, she was building a practice devoted to being the best in a certain niche which other doctors were only treating as a sideline. 

When we Googled the keywords a patient would use to find a specialist in this niche, she was not showing up on page one. Only Wikipedia entries, national organizations and other informational sites were showing up. No doctors and certainly no doctors in the city where she practiced.  

And since she specialized in one area, she needed to communicate with doctors who could refer patients to her. She needed to develop a short brochure and do something to increase the likelihood that the doctor would read the brochure and not just throw it away.


There was nothing manipulative in what I was doing for the physician. It was all about coming up with clear, concise wording; adjusting her web page and writing a short brochure on her specialty. 

The snag in my plan was in determining how to get a doctor to read a brochure. Chances were good that some gatekeeper would throw it away before the doctor saw it.  You can't just set up an appointment to visit the doctor to talk shop. Getting the ear of a doctor is nearly impossible. Sales people, with nice fat expense accounts, take up their free (non-revenue generating) time.


What I did not tell my friend was that part of my marketing plan was to have my client throw a blowout summer party at the lake and a killer Christmas party with the intent of inviting a select group of physicians who would likely refer patients to my client. Is that manipulation? Schmoozing? Bribery? Or is that simply the most effective way to gain the attention of busy, affluent and influential people? 

It's a tough call. 


James Snider is a marketing consultant, responsible for developing the 3.4 billion dollar 1394/FireWire market. James has over 16 years of marketing experience with 7 years working for Fortune 100 companies, 8 years as executive director of a non-profit and, since the summer of 2009, as a strategic business development consultant. www.linkedin.com/in/jamessnider

Social Media and Fishing

I lead weekly social media labs. I frequently find people who are stuck on some minor detail with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. and feel that they just can not move forward until they (for example) understand what they should enter into the "Location" field....do they enter "Grapevine" or "DFW, Texas" or "Dallas - Fort Worth"...do they spell out "Fort" in "Ft. Worth" and do they spell "Texas" or just enter "TX"...


I also find people who are ready to write off social media because "It does not work." What you find out is that they tried posting three or four things to Twitter and nothing much happened. They did not see their Twitter account show up on page one of Google search results. They did not pick up a dozen followers in their first week. No one reached out to them via Direct Message.


I find this to be a particular tendancy among engineers. Their expectations of cause and effect are perfect for product design but not very good for business development. I have seen brilliant engineers with exciting product designs collect some great leads from a conference or a trade show, send off an email as soon as they return to the office, then wait for a response. Maybe, if they are very aggressive, they will make a phone call...and leave voice mail. What more can they do? They emailed / called and nothing happened. Maybe they are lucky enough to get a face-to-face meeting, then they expect the potential customer to get back to them.  When nothing happens, they become frustrated...and go out of business.

I feel like asking, "If you went fishing and the fish were not biting, would you say that fishing does not work?  Of course not! You would change bait, change locations, come back on a different day or a different time of day. You would ask someone where to go and what lures or bait seem to work there."


You need to do the same thing with social media. Try different things. Be creative. Keep at it. It is not the key to overnight success. You must be persistent and build success slowly.

James Snider is a marketing consultant, responsible for developing the 3.4 billion dollar 1394/FireWire market. James has over 16 years of marketing experience with 7 years working for Fortune 100 companies, 8 years as executive director of a non-profit and, since the summer of 2009, as a strategic business development consultant. www.linkedin.com/in/jamessnider

It I'd Asked People What They Wanted...

When it comes to the way most people approach social media marketing for the first time, I am reminded of a quote by Henry Ford.  Ford said, "If I'd asked people what they wanted, they would have told me 'Faster Horses'."


When I see a steady Twitter stream of news releases, I think "How is this any different than the 'Recent News' section on your web page? "  When I see an endless list of "this week's car deals," I wonder, "How is this any different than the classified section of the newspaper?"  If social media is so hot and new and so revolutionary...why do you think you can derive any benefit by using it like an old marketing tool?


Social media is about attracting customers by being interesting.  Talk about how you are being "green."  Tell me about the great charities you support and how you arrange volunteer days so your employees contribute a day of work to Habitat for Humanity or the local food bank.  Tell me a funny story about your product or service.  Give me information on how to get the most from your product or service.  Give me something interesting to keep me coming back for more.


Don't use social media to hawk your products day after day.  Be the company talking about something interesting.  What are you doing that someone might want to know about?  Tweet about those things.  Update your LinkedIn network with those things.  Put that on your Facebook wall.


Tell me something interesting and I will want to know more. That will lead to sales.

James Snider is a marketing consultant, responsible for developing the 3.4 billion dollar 1394/FireWire market. James has over 16 years of marketing experience with 7 years working for Fortune 100 companies, 8 years as executive director of a non-profit and, since the summer of 2009, as a strategic business development consultant.  www.linkedin.com/in/jamessnider

The Big Mistake so many Make

One mistake I see being made by businesses using social media is that they think it can be all about them. Traditional marketing is all about getting your message in front of people... and your message is all about you, your company, your product or your service.  We use traditional web sites in this way.  Go to the TI, Ford, or Wal-Mart websites and you will see that almost all the information is about their products.  The customer goes to their website when they want this sort of information.


However, social media is different.  It serves a different purpose which is why it is so hot right now.  Most corporate marketing types can not get their head around this.  Social media is all about building relationships with your customer.  You are not going to build much of a relationship if all you do is talk about yourself.


I am reminded of a person I met at a social event about 6 months ago.  He looked lonely so I struck up a conversation.  I quickly found out why he was lonely.  He talked and talked about himself and never paused for me to get a word in edgewise.  He talked about the railroad industry and why it is in trouble right now.  At first, he was moderately interesting...until he started talking about the design work he'd done.   He was able to reduce cross axial vibrations by 19% which reduced the damage to goods and the friction between the wheels and the rails.  This permitted cars to carry 14% larger loads.... I introduced him to an unsuspecting person who just happened to be standing there and then I slipped quietly away.


Now, if I ever need information on cross axial vibrations, I will find that guy again and have the conversation, but chances are, I am going to avoid him in the future.  He did not provide me with anything interesting or useful.  He is a walking encyclopedia full of information I do not need.


What about you as a marketer? How are you using social media?  Are you providing information which a potential customer might find useful or are you telling them too much about yourself and the products you want to sell to them?  You can not just post anything on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn and expect it to generate interest in your product.  You have to build interest in yourself by building a relationship with a group of people who will eventually be involved in purchasing your product.


Don't let your social media marketing be like the author about whom Moses Hadas said, " This book fills a much-needed gap."


More on what to write in the next post.

James Snider is a marketing consultant, responsible for developing the 3.4 billion dollar 1394/FireWire market. James has over 16 years of marketing experience with 7 years working for Fortune 100 companies, 8 years as executive director of a non-profit and, since the summer of 2009, as a strategic business development consultant.  www.linkedin.com/in/jamessnider