Advertising Week – Highlights

As you may know, the best and brightest marketing professionals have met this week in New York for the annual Advertising Week conference.

AdAge.com has complete coverage of what was discussed, but I am just going to cover a few of the hot topics.

Digital Marketing has been a major focus of this weeks seminars (In fact, Cleveland just held a successful national conference focused solely on Content Marketing). With digital advertising expected to grow 14% in the US this year, making it a $42.26 billion industry! (according to eMarketer) Additionally, real-time bidding for digital display ads is expected to jump 73.9%.

 

Advertising Week’s Madison Avenue Walk of Fame is planning to induct new names. Ad characters including StarKist Co’s Charlie the Tuna, Travelocity.com’s Roaming Gnome and Tucan Sam (Kellogg Co Froot Loops) have been riding double-decker buses through Times Square as they compete for votes to be inducted.

 

Advertising Week Panel “Balls of Steel?” Top Takeaways –
1.  Don’t be afraid to be naive
2.  Try to keep level
3.  Work with people you respect
4.  Innovative ideas are everywhere. Things you hate, dislike can be inspiration for new services and products.

For more insight, watch this video…

 

Three Things Top Female Marketers Have Learned…
How has Sheryl Sandberg’s bestseller “Lean In” influenced women in marketing?

Measuring is important. Allstate CEO Tom Wilson, expressed the need to expand female employment in the workplace and claims you shouldn’t be “gender neutral” when hiring but rather “gender biased” towards women (40% of leaders at Allstate are women).

Open Dialogue is Key. According to Linda Boff, exec director-global brand marketing at GE noted, “Women speaking to women is wonderful, but engaging men in this dialogue take it a step further.”

Value of Mentorship. Kim Kadlec, worldwide VP global marketing at Johnson & Johnson commented, “The leap from doer to leader is really hard… many women will start off as doers but leadership is a whole new ballgame.” It requires a mentor to provide guidance and context – a whole new perspective.

 

Finally, What are the Trendspotters at JWT tracking for clients?
Marketers need to stay up on wearable technology and predictive personalization (you know… from all that big data marketers collect). Hear more in this video with Ann Mack, director of trendspotting at JWT.

 

 

Important Career Skills for Personal Growth

An extension to my recent post on job skills and the value of a college degree, I want to share this great advice from Teresa Crane. She provides a helpful outlook for job seekers (new grads and experienced pros), including tips, resources, and strategies to build yourself as a professional and land that next job. Her full article “Career Skills you Won’t Learn in School” can be found on BestCollegesOnlineBlog, but we’ll just highlight a few thoughts to get started…

1 – Identify Potential Employers
Teresa suggests you create a list of specific companies and organizations that are currently seeking people with your job skills. You should also explore your industry/field before you begin sending out applications and resumes. The list should include key details such as company name, website, location, HR contact, hire announcements and how you found out about them (i.e. through friend, social media, news article, alumni).

Even if you are not keeping a record of potential companies, these are important details to know about any company for which you are applying. It is impressive to potential employers to know some history of the company you are interviewing with, especially if you can note how you heard of them or a recent accolade from the local newspaper or industry awards.

Also consider using these tactics for starting your list.

Venues and special events – Meet employers in your local area and online through career and employment events. (try National Career Fairs or Jo-Hunt.org)

Online services – Check job databases, online application and resume referral systems. General search sites like Monster.com and CareerBuilder.com include a wide variety of jobs and industries.

Alumni directories – Work with your school to locate lists of alumni from your program. Where are other graduates working? Are their organizations hiring?

Recruiters – Many companies use in-house and contracted recruiters or staffing firms. Teresa says, “EmploymentDigest.net provides guidance on working with recruiters that includes researching the companies to find out where they make placements and being truthful in presenting your experience and job interests.”

2- Establish Your Online Presence
A positive and professional online presence is key in today’s job market. Teresa says, “Having an online presence allows you to not only participate in social networking activities related to your career field, but also present your experience, interests, and skills to potential employers in an arena where they are already active – the Internet.”

I’ve written before about the importance of a good LinkedIn profile and online resume. Take the time to thoughtfully complete your online profile, with a job position in mind, edit your resume to demonstrate how your skills will meet a potential employers needs.

3- Develop a Job Search Strategy
Focus your efforts by outlining how often you will search for a job (weekly, daily), how you will reach out to the employer and where you will search for position announcements. By detailing a strategy, you will more efficiently solicit potential employers without wasting your time on ineffective activities. Keeping a record of your efforts and reviewing it periodically will also help you figure out which tactics are working well,  and which ones are not, then adjust your strategy accordingly.

 

If you want more great advice on writing your resume and cover letter, or how to prepare for the job interview, read more from Teresa Crane online:

http://www.bestcollegesonline.com/career-skills-learn-school/

Good Luck Job Hunting!

Ways to Conquer Public Speaking

Most professionals at some point in their career must present to a group of their coworkers, clients or other professionals. While an audience of three may not make your knees weak, an audience of 300 makes an impression.

In an article on the Open Forum, Lindsey Boyer Pauline, a public speaking coach and speech-language pathologist says, “For a small-business owner, one-on-one meetings, small meetings and short pitches are the key interactions, but the rules of public speaking still apply.”

Here are a few tips for conquering your next speaking engagement.

1. Know what you’re talking about.
Do your research and know your topic. You don’t want to say the wrong thing. You want to demonstrate you are knowledgeable, polished and professional. Prepare for anticipated questions from your audience.

2. Understand the audience.
“Ease your nerves by remembering your audience wants you to succeed,” Pauline says. “We all want to talk to someone pleasant and knowledgeable, not someone fumbling to get words out. Your audience wants you to be a good speaker.”

3. Deflect the attention.
Make the meeting less about you and more about the other person. Its natural to want to do business with someone we like, so show a genuine interest in the person or audience you are talking with. Also focus less on how wonderful your product is and more about how wonderful your product can make your audience.

4. Write it down and say it loud.
Writing down what you want to say and them practice saying it out loud will make you more confident when you present it. Pauline advises when she runs public speaking coaching sessions with business executives, they always practice by talking through the presentation. Remember, practice usually makes perfect.

5. Practice Good Form.
Be organzied and prepared, use a slow rate of speech, make lengthy eye contact to show confidence, start and end with a good handshake, and take long breaths to slow yourself down and calm your nerves. And don’t forget to Smile – it shows confidence and likability.

Most of all, you only get once chance to make a first impression. If public speaking is a fear, you need to get out there and start doing more of it in places where there is less pressure. Try a community groups or giving toasts with friends to develop your skills.

Learning how to prepare polished presentations and speak confidently are skills that can help business owners share their ideas, sell their services and win more customers.

Web Ads Losing Their Influence?

Just like all great advertising that gets pushed into the public’s face… we get tired of it. Bombarded by pop-ups no more, many websites are now battling the thousands of consumers downloaded AdBlock software to keep websites clean. Over 200 million users have downloaded Adblock software since 2001 from Eyeo – and that’s from just one provider.

What does that mean for the online ad industry? Change is coming… website advertising won’t disappear anytime soon but it will make agencies reconsider ways to engage with customers.

According to PageFair, the practice of ad blocking is growing at a rate that suggests almost all sites will appear without ads by 2018, this according to a recent article in The New York Times.

Probably those most fearful of digital advertising changes are those working in the industry. Online advertising will have a less distinct role in overall marketing, meaning less profit and fewer workers in the digital communications market.

“We are all increasingly tracked, online and offline, and our friendships and tastes are noted in order to send us the ads that algorithms suggest we will act upon. If we do seem interested in something expensive, like a car or a trip, we may be tracked and fed information for a period of days or months. That means a single ad is relatively less important.” (The New York Times)

This change may lead advertising down a new path, one in which the relative value of studying and understanding consumer behavior is greater than the ad message.

Marc Benioff, a founder and the chief executive of Salesforce in the NYT article said, “They (companies) will connect with their customers from all sorts of places: Canon from inside an Internet-connected camera; Toyota from inside a connected car.”

If companies to merge media devices with connecting to customers, much of what used to ad messaging will stem from there. At that point, not just agencies but Web pages that depend on ad revenue, will have a struggle of their own.

Employers Losing Value of College Degree

An interesting article on the Open Forum addressed whether a college degree still holds value among employers. A four-year bachelors degree can be quite costly and the expectation is that with a degree, you are more valuable to employers… or not as this article suggested.

The article cites a new survey by Manta which reveals that more than 60 percent of small-business owners find no correlation between employee performance and education levels. However, about half of small-business owners require their employees to have a college degree.

While a college education is a great tool to prepare many individuals for the workforce, is it necessary for most business positions? Does on the job experience trump a few years of learning about a career?

“Manta found there was one group among which a college education was valued, and that was the business owners themselves. The survey found that 70 percent of those polled had a bachelor’s degree, and more than 60 percent thought their college degree was important to their business success.”

SO, it begs the question… how valuable is a college degree? Certainly if you want to be a doctor or engineer you will need one to be successful in your career, but for the rest of us, does it really matter?

In an economy when things are changing so quickly that workers consistently need to be trained and retrained with new skills, is experience more valuable?

Although there is not yet any significant change int he number of students attending and graduating college, the next generation may find trade schools more valuable for landing their first real job.

Do you feel your college degree is losing value among employers?

 

 

Just Do It… for 25 years

Yeah, that famous Nike advertising campaign has reached its 25th Anniversary… making me not only feel old but proud that such a simple marketing phrase as “Just Do It” continues to influence our perception of a company’s brand and has generated a passion for excellence among a diverse groups of athletes.

In honor of this Silver Anniversary for Nike, its marketing team at Wieden + Kennedy have reinvented the simple slogan.

Enjoy.