Business to Business Media Placements
Business to Business Table Of Contents
Date
Publication
Title Supervisors Overrode HR-Approved Accommodations for Obese Worker
9.5.2017
SHRM
8/14/2017
SHRM
7/3/2017
npr
7/1/2017
RGJ
2/3/2016
Forbes
3/1/2015
Smart Meetings
10/10/2014
Inc.
5 Simple Ways to Get Employees More Engaged
9/24/2014
Inc.
Why You Should Invest More In Social Marketing This Holiday Season (Infographic)
9/3/2014
ADWEEK
9/3/2014
Entrepreneur
8/28/2014 8/11/2014 8/7/2014 8/1/2014
Entrepreneur PR Week Fast Company Bloomberg Businessweek
7/11/2014
Entrepreneur
7/1/2014
Fast Company
5/8/2014
Entrepreneur
4/22/2014
Forbes
3/28/2014
Inc.
3/27/2014
Entrepreneur
3/17/2014
Bloomberg Businessweek
2/24/2014
NBC News
1/31/2014 1/31/2014 12/1/2013
Wall Street Journal ADWEEK The Meeting Professional
Set Ground Rules for the Different Types of Service Animals In Reno, Nev., Homegrown Startups Fuel Tech Transformation Dream Catchers: Immigrants make mark on U.S. economy, labor force What a Restaurateur in Reno Learned From Betting Big (And Losing) Adventures In Team Building
How the Girl Scouts Do Real-Time Social Marketing The Grand Ole Opry Gets Hip to Hashtags to Harvest a New Audience Online The Video Revolution Will Not Be Televised Offerpop App is Source of Inspiration for Brands 5 Ways to Manage Both Good and Bad Online Reviews Beach Read Recommendations of the Guiltless Sort 4 Ways to rewire the Corporate Brain to Compete in the 21st Century How GoPro is Transforming Advertising as We Know It 3 Alternative Tech Startup Cities with Less Traffic, More Housing (Infographic) How Four Eco Brands Are Using Social Media Marketing Effectively Is Your Co-Founder "the One'? 7 Ways to Tell 3 Companies Share How They Stay True to Company Culture Amidst Rapid Growth What's Your Workday Exercise? Not Your Grandma's Quilt: How to Speed Up a Timeless Art Form Internet Speed-Quilting Queen Jenny Doan The Second Screen Super Bowl Crafting and Growing a Partnership
Business to Business Table Of Contents Date
Publication
Title Why Wait Until Saturday? Small Businesses Seek Black Friday 11/13/2013 Entrepreneur Buzz 11/13/2013 Ad Age Hashtags Breathe Life Back Into Social Commerce 8/9/2013 Bloomberg Businessweek Offerpop Launches Facebook Poll App for Brands 4/24/2013 US News: Money How to Spot a Home-Contractor Scam 12/5/2012 Fox Business Philanthropic Team Building For Business 10/22/2012 Fox Business Own a Piece of Karate Franchise and Keep Your Day Job 9/1/2012 Franchise Times Just for Kids James Kosta, 3G Studios: A Wild Ride for Jailed Teen Hacker 7/1/2012 Huffington Post Turned Video Game Entrepreneur Why You Should Swap Your Corporate Boardroom For A 5/4/2012 Fast Company Company Kitchen 4/1/2012 Entrepreneur Making sure the kids are all right 2/1/2012 The Rotarian Manual Labor 11/1/2011 Money Magazine Point, Click and Cut Remodel Bills 9/1/2011 Entrepreneur Startups Circle of Trust 7/1/2011 Spirit - Southwest Airlines Diggerslist 6/1/2011 Inc. Fabulous Facebook Pages 11/18/2010 The Wall Street Journal GM IPO Soaring, But GM as an Investment? Blech 3/20/2009 South Florida Business Journal Shrink Wrap Franchisee Hopes To Buck Economic Trend 3/1/2009 Fortune Small Business Wrap Party 2/1/2009 Entrepreneur Building Up Teams - And Communities 10/1/2008 Successful Meetings Hands Across America 5/1/2008 The Meeting Professional Helping Hands
Supervisors Overrode HR-Approved Accommodations for Obese Worker Sep 5, 2017
Supervisors at Capital One ignored HR's approval of reasonable accommodations for an obese employee with body odor who sued under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) after he was fired, according to a recent complaint.
If someone's obesity is caused by an underlying medical disorder that substantially limits a major life activity, such as breathing or moving, then obesity is covered by the ADA, noted Jonathan Mook, an attorney with DiMuroGinsberg in Alexandria, Va.
Body odor isn't typically covered by itself, said David Fram, director of ADA services for the National Employment Law Institute in Golden, Colo. However, the plaintiff's kidney condition, which resulted in strong body odor, arguably would be covered.
HR Approved Accommodations, Supervisors Denied Them
Paul Kaptur, a relationship manager dealing with people applying for automobile loans from Capital One in Illinois, said that after four surgeries to fix a kidney issue he gained weight due to the operations and kidney medications.
Kaptur requested—and was granted—accommodations from Capital One's HR department. But he alleged in his Aug. 16 complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois that his immediate supervisors would always deny them.
[SHRM members-only toolkit: Accommodating Employees' Disabilities]
For example, Kaptur asked to work in a vacant office away from co-workers if his condition triggered the strong odor. HR approved the request, but his immediate managers denied it. He also asked to have a work chair that did not have armrests on the sides, but he was fired before he received the chair. On Dec. 22, 2015, shortly before his firing on March 22, 2016, Kaptur received a conduct memo that criticized his hygiene and appearance. He had worked for the employer for 16 years and claims in his complaint that he was fired because of his weight and body odor.
Kaptur maintains he was also harassed. Co-workers and managers often made demeaning comments to Kaptur about his weight and odor, he claims. For example, a direct manager allegedly said he should "join a fat farm." Another direct manager told Kaptur that he could not see "someone who looks like you" leading a team. Kaptur's co-workers also regularly taunted Kaptur about his weight, but supervisors never stepped in to stop the behavior, he alleged.
When managers won't listen to HR after it has approved reasonable accommodation requests, or if they allow harassing conduct in the workplace, HR should explain to managers that their job performances will be rated based on their compliance with the law, Fram said.
"Not providing a reasonable accommodation is the same thing as discrimination," he said. "It's part of a manager's job responsibilities to comply with the law."
HR should follow up with supervisors and employees to ensure that approved accommodations have been put in place and are working, Mook suggested.
If managers are pushing back because they believe an accommodation is unduly burdensome, HR should make sure the managers provide evidence of undue hardship, said Joan Casciari, an attorney with Seyfarth Shaw in Chicago.
If supervisors act on their own to deny accommodations, they expose the organization to potential liability, noted Bryan Benard, an attorney with Holland & Hart in Salt Lake City.
"Some organizations empower HR to do what HR knows needs to be done. Other organizations do not do that," noted Michael McClory, an attorney with Bullard Law in Portland, Ore. One workaround at businesses that don't back HR is to involve immediate supervisors in the accommodation request and to regularly brief supervisors on developments. Also inform the supervisors' superiors on how the managers are cooperating.
Accommodations won't be required in every case, which HR should explain to supervisors as well, he said.
Obesity as an ADA Disability
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has taken the position that obesity by itself— whether caused by an underlying medical condition or not—can be an ADA-covered disability, Casciari said. The interpretive guidance to ADA regulations states that body weight that falls above or below a normal range can be an impairment, as can abnormal body weight caused by a medical disorder, such as a thyroid condition, diabetes or bipolar mental disorder.
"The courts have struggled with this issue with varying results," she said. Some have decided that obesity must be the result of a medical condition to be an ADA disability, while others have held that morbid obesity—generally being twice what is considered a normal weight—is a disability by itself.
Set Ground Rules for the Different Types of Service Animals Room may have to be made for comfort and service animals in the workplace Aug 14, 2017
Most people are familiar with service animals—typically dogs—that assist people with disabilities at home and at work. But what about comfort animals such as pigs, snakes, birds or cats? Are you prepared to welcome them into the workplace? Employers should be meticulous about setting ground rules for employees who have service or comfort animals and set out consequences in the event those
rules are broken. Employers also should consider possible problems with the accommodation and see if they can be addressed before granting the request. Service animals are not necessarily considered pets. They work to improve the negative effects of the person's disability, said Jonathan Mook, an attorney with DiMuroGinsberg in Alexandria, Va. Versatile Dogs, Other Animals Employers may be most familiar with guide dogs as service animals for employees with visual or hearing impairments, noted Emily Hobbs-Wright, an attorney with Holland & Hart in Denver. There also are seizure response dogs trained to predict oncoming seizures, to warn the person to get to a safe place and to go for help, she noted. Diabetic alert dogs are trained to sense when a person's blood sugar is too high or too low and can prompt the person to take action to stabilize his or her blood sugar levels. Emotional support dogs can help individuals who have panic attacks, autism or other mental disorders. "Other dogs are trained to pick up or fetch items for those in wheelchairs," she said. The employment provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) do not limit the types of animals that an employee may need in the workplace as a reasonable accommodation, Mook noted. "This is unlike Title III of the ADA involving public accommodations, where the Department of Justice regulations specifically limit the type of service animals
that a business open to the public must accommodate to dogs and miniature horses—no monkeys," he said. Interactive Process Employers do not have to let employees with disabilities bring their service animals to work, Hobbs-Wright noted. The employee must make a request and the employer use its interactive process for reasonable accommodation to determine if allowing the service animal in the workplace may be a reasonable accommodation that does not result in undue hardship. "The employer and the employee should discuss how to handle educating coworkers and customers about the service animal," she said. The employer may request medical documentation of hidden disabilities, such as psychiatric impairments, to verify that the person needs a service animal. HR also can ask for an explanation of why and how the service animal enables the employee to perform essential job functions. Once the medical documentation is received, the employer should evaluate if the request for an animal in the workplace is reasonable and will effectively enable the employee to do the job while not posing an undue burden, said Patti Perez, an attorney with Ogletree Deakins in San Diego. There are no specific certification requirements for a service or comfort animal under the ADA, Mook noted. A word of caution: Employers generally are not permitted to disclose to others that an employee has a disability. "Accordingly, an employer should only state that the employee has an animal accompanying the employee to work and not to interact with the animal," said Debra Friedman, an attorney with Cozen O'Connor
in Philadelphia. The employee with the service or comfort animal may choose to tell others the purpose of the animal but is not required to do so. Possible Disruptions If another employee is allergic to the service or emotional support animal, the employer must try to accommodate the employee with allergies as well. "An employer generally cannot refuse to allow a service animal or emotional support dog into the workplace because of employee allergies," she said. The employer might consider moving the employee who uses the service animal to a different location where the problem with allergies would not arise, Mook noted. Employers may also draft a written agreement with the employee in which the employee will bear the costs of any cleaning or repairs that may be needed, he added. What if another employee is extremely afraid of the service animal? Accommodations for both employees' needs should be considered. Also, before the accommodation is implemented, check with other entities, such as a landlord and surrounding business establishments, to ensure there isn't an unforeseen problem in granting the accommodation, Perez said. If the animal is not truly enabling the employee to perform the job, the animal need not be allowed, said Peter Petesch, an attorney with Littler in Washington, D.C. "The same might apply if the animal is actually distracting the employee from performing his or her job," he said. "There have been cases where courts denied
accommodation claims by employees seeking to bring untrained puppies to work, for example." If the service animal is denied as an accommodation, other reasonable accommodations must be considered. [SHRM members-only toolkit: Accommodating Employees' Disabilities] Discuss Expectations Perez noted that employers should set criteria on how the animal is expected to interact at the workplace by establishing rules about: Animal cleanliness. The employee's need to take additional breaks to take the animal outside. Handling the animal—on a leash or held, for example. Co-worker care for the animal if the employee is ever out of the office without the animal. Expectations regarding barking, growling, bites or other aggressive behavior. The ground rules should be set forth in writing, Mook said. "So if a problem arises in the future, the employer can clearly document its attempt to accommodate the person's service or comfort animal," he noted. "The more these rules are agreed upon and established up front, the greater the likelihood that the accommodation will work," Perez said.
July 3, 20174
Reno, Nev., is enjoying a tech boom. Giants like Apple, Google and Tesla are all there. The transformation is also being driven by some homegrown start-ups, but some worry Reno will become unaffordable. ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
The tech industry is reshaping cities far from traditional hubs like Silicon Valley and Seattle. Today in All Tech Considered - how tech companies choose a home base and what happens to cities when the industry moves in.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
SHAPIRO: First we go to Reno, Nev. It's been enjoying a tech boom for a few years. Apple and Google are building data centers there. Tesla has an aptly named Gigafactory. As NPR's Arun Rath found, homegrown startups are helping to drive Reno's tech transformation.
ARUN RATH, BYLINE: Capstak is a tech startup that until recently had operations spread across San Francisco, New York, Tel Aviv and Reno. They needed to consolidate.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Good. How are you?
RATH: Capstak went with Reno, moving into this space called the Innevation Center, a home for startups sponsored by the University of Nevada, Reno. Michael Schnabel is Capstak's CEO.
MICHAEL SCHNABEL: The university embraced us with this facility, and it just made a lot of sense for us to say OK, no, we're not going to be in New York. We're not going to be in San Francisco. We're going to be here.
RATH: It's not just about lower rent and taxes than New York and California. The university provides human capital, students like computer science major Alex Sanchez who had been intending to move after graduating.
ALEX SANCHEZ: Ultimately I decided that OK, I'm going to graduate, then I'm probably going to relocate to either California, Washington, Seattle or Denver in one of the big tech hubs where just the tech scene is just bursting.
RATH: Sanchez is now interning with Capstak. His boss, Schnabel, says Reno's offerings are starting to compete with what those other tech hubs can offer.
SCHNABEL: You're seeing a lot of similarities in the energy, the number of startups, availability of capital, and all of those things are important for a successful startup culture.
RATH: The growth of the local startup culture here is no accident. The Economic Development Authority at Western Nevada has been working to encourage entrepreneurship since the crash. Bryan McArdle is with the authority.
BRYAN MCARDLE: We were so beaten down by the recession, and we didn't have a highly diversified economy. So it really was just construction, gaming, mining. And something happened where there was a resurgence of pride.
RATH: The authority established the Reno Collective, another home for new startups to work, collaborate and meet with clients. McArdle says it's had to expand several times and just took over a massive former recording studio downtown.
MCARDLE: And it sort of changed the dynamic that now we have people working downtown, which predominately was just casino workers. Now we have actual tech people working down there.
MONICA DUPEA: We have a major housing crisis and shortage in Reno right now. And we're building like crazy, but we can't build as fast as people are moving in.
RATH: Monica DuPea is the executive director of the Nevada Youth Empowerment Project. She worries about how the young people who aren't getting internships at tech startups can afford to live here.
DUPEA: The majority of our young people are, you know, not entering college, are not gaining the skill and the knowledge that would help place them at these great companies.
RATH: At the same time, for those who do have the education and ability, these companies can make the difference between staying in Reno or leaving for good. Alex Sanchez, the UNR student who's interning with Capstak, already has a full-time job lined up with the company after he graduates.
SANCHEZ: The original plan was to move out because I couldn't find many job opportunities, but now it looks like Reno is pulling me into staying because of all the tech companies that are - come in.
RATH: A lot of the local entrepreneurs say that for the longest time, going back through several boom and bust cycles, there was a feeling that if you wanted to do something with your education, you had to leave town. For young people like Alex Sanchez, there's now a feeling that you don't have to move away to move up. Arun Rath, NPR News.
Dream catchers: Immigrants make mark on U.S. economy, labor force IMMIGRANTS CONTINUE TO MAKE A SIGNIFICANT IMPACT ON EVERY FACET OF THE U.S. ECONOMY. BUT IS IT GOOD OR BAD? ……
Entrepreneurial drive ‘I SAW MY FATHER STRUGGLE IMMIGRATING TO (OTHER) COUNTRIES, SETTING UP JOBS AND WORKING FOR OTHER PEOPLE.’ Like the tea that his company makes, Kunall Patel is a product of the world.
Born in Kenya, the 37-year-old Patel spent his formative years living in India, Portugal and the United Kingdom as his father chased opportunities wherever he could find them. Although the experience enriched Patel’s worldview, it also showed him the harsher side of immigration.
“I saw my father struggle immigrating to those countries, setting up jobs and working for other people,” Patel said. “For some reason, we just never made it.”
Patel cited the experience as one reason for developing a strong, laser-focused drive to succeed. From Wales, Patel moved to New Jersey in 2001 to finish college, landing a job with JPMorgan Chase in New York City once he graduated. It was after marrying a third-generation organic tea grower, however, that Patel would find his true calling.
Patel and wife Promilla, whose family has been growing tea since the 1920s, decided to go west from New York after buying an old tea company in Reno called Davidson Organics. Since taking over the business 10 years ago, the couple has invested half a million dollars in new machinery and infrastructure while growing its original staff of six to about 30 people.
For the well-traveled Patel, running a company that sources its teas from various countries, was a perfect fit.
“Tea is a melting pot,” Patel said. “It’s comprised of ingredients from different regions and cultures and ethnicities.”
In that sense, tea serves as the perfect metaphor for the United States’ diversity, Patel said. It also symbolizes one of the most powerful hooks for immigrants to come to America: entrepreneurship.
….
What A Restaurateur In Reno Learned From Betting Big (And Losing) February 3, 2016
In 2014, Mark Estee, 45, an entrepreneur in Reno, NV, who runs five restaurants, opened an ambitious venture he called Reno Provisions in an old J.C. Penney building. The $1.2 million project included a 10,000-square-foot restaurant-bar-market that butchered raw meat, produced cured meat products and turned out pasta and baked goods for his restaurants. It also housed a catering operation and a cafeteria that served food made from fresh local ingredients. Within a year, however, Reno Provisions was drowning in red ink. Desperate for cash, Estee shut down most of the operation and was forced to sell
his flagship Italian eatery, Campo, where he continues to collects a salary as executive chef. In this edited and condensed interview, he talks about realizing his own limitations as a business owner and what he learned from failure.
Susan Adams: How did you get started in restaurants?
Mark Estee: I came up through kitchens washing dishes and then I went to culinary school at Johnson & Wales in Providence, RI. I graduated there in 1993, went to work for Hyatt and transferred out to Lake Tahoe. In 2002 when I was 31, I opened my first restaurant.
Adams: How did you finance your first business?
Estee: We raised $1 million from local people in downtown Truckee, CA CA +0.26% and started Moody’s.
Adams: How did it do?
Estee: It got critical acclaim and it was popular but it never made solid profits. We were breaking even. We got paid. Adams: Were you personally clearing $100,000 a year?
Estee: Yeah. But it’s really hard to make money in restaurants. On a good day we made 3% if we kicked butt. We had to have delicious food and great service and to take care of our employees. All that means the margins were really small. Adams: It must be tough to survive on that kind of profit margin.
Estee: I opened up a burger restaurant that made 20% in profits. That helped.
Adams: When did you feel like you were successful?
Estee: I don’t equate money with success. After we opened up Campo, I felt we were making a positive impact on our community, paying a great wage to people, bringing new beverages, new thoughts, new culture to Reno.
Adams: What were your margins like at Campo?
Estee: More like 5%.
Adams: How did you get the margins up? Estee: Proper management of cash flow, making sure everyone was in on what was happening with sales, labor and cost of goods. I know a lot of places don’t share those numbers with their people but we did.
Adams: Why did you open Reno Provisions? What was the business plan?
Estee: I was aiming toward vertical integration. I created a location that was going to be a hub for all the restaurants I had. We’d produce things that we would sell to ourselves. We’d make the bread, salami and deserts and sell them to our restaurants. I thought we’d be more profitable.
Adams: How do you set a price when you are selling something to yourself? And did you set it too low?
Estee: Where we screwed up is we weren’t covering our margins. We looked at the restaurants’ food costs and used that. If their food cost was 33% across the board, we’d just calculate from there. Now we look at each product and figure the margin we need to make. I used to look at it terms of what was best for the restaurant.
Adams: How did you fund Reno Provisions?
Estee: We put $1.2 million into the business and remodeled it from the ground up.
Adams: If you had it to do over, what would you do differently?
Estee: I would first hire a CEO/CFO type of person to work with me. I would make sure I knew how to run a market and wholesaler rather than a restaurant because it’s very very different. I had great managers in place but I did not have a CFO, CEO or COO type of leadership. That’s not my specialty. I’m
a visionary guy, an energy guy, a can-do guy. I’m not the person who says, are we properly planning this out? I couldn’t even figure out why I was in trouble. A friend who advises me sat me down and said, you’re running a $10 million company and who’s the COO? I said, me. He said you need a COO. I started crying.
Adams: How much money did you lose?
Estee: Just under $1 million. I closed down the first floor and we’re operating in the basement. I want to keep the butcher shop and the salami production and the catering. Adams: How did you make up for the loss?
Estee: I brought in a partner at my restaurant Campo. He bought 100% for $850,000. Part of the deal allows me to buy back 49% at that price, up until six months has gone by. After that, we’d set a new valuation.
Adams: Was that a good price?
Estee: Yes.
Adams: Has it been a difficult adjustment running what is now someone else’s restaurant? Estee: Is it tough versus the alternative? No! Because we’re not changing the culture. If we can get better, shoot, I’m willing to look at how we can get better all the time.
Adams: Did you hire a COO?
Estee: So far I only brought on the partner at Campo. He comes from Wall Street and he’s run other business systems.
Adams: I’m amazed you were able to stay afloat thus far without that kind of help.
Estee: I feel really lucky. I had four different bookkeepers. We knew all the numbers. I sat down with my computer with five bank accounts and moved money around like a shell game. I didn’t know what the
f— I was doing. I’m being honest with you. My new partner said, I’m surprised you haven’t jumped off a building and put a bullet in your head. I probably should have ended up bankrupt. I still might. Each restaurant had a mission statement, a vision statement, a general manager, proper staffing, we had great food and everything else. The part I messed up was at the top. It was me.
Adams: But you’re still running all your businesses besides Campo?
Estee: It is going to change. For now I’m running the basement of Reno Provisions, which we’ve renamed Reno Local Food Group, where we have the wholesale meat business and catering. I’m consolidating the other businesses and I’m deciding how we’re going to run them.
Adams: How are you going to avoid bankruptcy?
Estee: Every day I’m going to try to work very hard.
5 Simple Ways to Get Employees More Engaged 10.10.2014
BY KEVIN DAUM @KEVINJDAUM
Most often just issuing a paycheck is not enough to get employees really excited about their work. Here are 5 easy and powerful ways to boost their engagement. Engaged employees can transform a company. They can take customer loyalty to new levels, reduce hiring costs, and improve productivity and product quality. But boosting employee engagement is hard work. And busy executives are sometimes so focused on the objectives that they don't take the proper steps to keep employees tightly tied into company culture and inspired to do great work. A recent survey from Bain and Company in partnership with Netsurvey analyzed responses from 200,000 employees in 40 companies and found two troubling trends. First, the survey showed that engagement declines with employee tenure, meaning that your most experienced and knowledgeable employees are typically the least engaged. The survey also found that employee engagement was weakest at the lowest levels of the company and in service and sales departments, putting the least engaged workers on the front lines of a company's daily interaction with customers. So how does a company boost employee engagement without the trial-and-error, time-intensive process of launching a new program from scratch without a blueprint for success? I recently had the chance to discuss this challenge with Darius Mirshahzadeh, President and co-founder of Endeavor America Loan Services. Mirshahzadeh has built a great team of highly engaged employees at his fast-growing mortgage company based in Walnut Creek, California. In less than a year, Endeavor has attracted 200 employees while spending zero dollars on recruiting. Here are 5 of his secrets for making sure employees start off on the right foot and stay highly motivated in their positions throughout their tenure. 1. Me before WE. Barrels of ink have been spilled over the concepts of collaboration and teamwork. These practices are vital, but so is the often overshadowed emphasis on the individual employee. Mirshahzadeh practices the "me before we" mentality using the StrengthsFinder talent assessment tool to discover
and grow employees' natural skills. His management makes it a point to mentor employees in their specific strengths and assemble teams that have complimentary skill sets. "Me before we" does not sacrifice the team for the sake of the individual, it puts an emphasis on individual development that ends up making for stronger teams. 2. Practice the "1 Percent" rule. So many executives delay putting a program in place because they think it requires a lot of effort or resources. Mirshahzadeh instituted a rule requiring at least one percent of company resources dedicated to employee development early in Endeavor's lifecycle. The commitment equals roughly 20 hours per employee each year focused on personal development. The program fosters company loyalty and high morale. 3. Make first days and birthdays special. Employees need to feel appreciated from day one and throughout the year or they'll feel detached and possibly resentful. On first days of work, don't just put the employee in a desk and let them fend for themselves. At Endeavor, first days are significant with an executive or founder spending personal face-to-face time with employees. On work anniversaries and birthdays, employees get hand-signed cards from senior management, a gift certificate and a personal note. 4. Use easy employee recognition tools. Consistent employee recognition is necessary for engagement, but doing it in a meaningful and consistent way is time-consuming and complicated for many. Endeavor uses a software tool that simplifies the process and democratizes recognition to allow the entire staff to recognize their colleagues. YouEarnedIt is a points-based software system that allows employees to gift points to deserving co-workers. The points can be redeemed for prizes or other rewards. Recognition comes in real time. The tool alleviates the burden of a manager having to launch the program and the results are a more authentic gauge of true employee achievement. 5. Make feedback easy and effective. A huge part of any executive or manager's job is listening. Listening sparks some of the best ideas, helps identify workplace problems early and builds a more connected and collaborative workplace. Endeavor uses the 15Five software system to provide a real-time, direct feedback pipeline to managers. Employees take 15 minutes each week to send comments that take a manager only five minutes to read, review and respond. The best ideas are quickly and easily passed up the chain of command, while problems are identified and addressed immediately. Listening is still best done inperson and face-to-face, but the system organizes feedback, sets up regular check-ins and allows unfiltered feedback to be sent to the highest decision-makers in the company with the push of a button.
Why You Should Invest More In Social Marketing This Holiday Season (Infographic) BY GRAHAM WINFREY @GRAHAMWINFREY 9-24-2014
Cashing in on the 2014 holiday season is all about socializing commerce. Here's what your marketing team needs to know. Social media marketing will play a crucial role in driving sales this holiday season, when U.S consumers are expected to spend a whopping $650 billion. Nearly 70 percent of brands in the U.S. will invest more in social media marketing during the 2014 holiday season compared to last year, and 92 percent of marketers plan to spend the majority of their social budget on Facebook, according to a survey from social software company Offerpop. The infographic below shares some of the most important social marketing trends for the upcoming holiday season.
How the Girl Scouts Do Real-Time Social Marketing
Pop culture events widen social graph By Lauren Johnson September 3, 2014, 1:41 PM EDT gone are the days when the Girl Scouts relied on word of mouth and door-to-door cookie selling to build brand buzz. Now, the organization enlists Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram for everything from long-term recruitment efforts to timely contests and promotions. Indeed, the organization uses a team of three employees to capitalize on pop culture moments—like when Luis Suarez’s bit an opponent during this year’s World Cup—that will broaden the brand’s appeal beyond moms and volunteers to the general public, according to Kayla Santalla, senior social media specialist at Girl Scouts of the USA. And in some cases, this real-time mentality helps the Girl Scouts blur the line between marketing and public relations. For instance, the Girl Scouts posted a 13-second video riffing on Suarez bite in June. The video, which has been viewed more than 9,100 times on YouTube, shows a Samoa cookie biting a Thin Mint. The clip was produced in a day and posted to social media. The video garnered one million media impressions during one night and was featured on ESPN and ABC. "It’s a way of leveraging digital assets that we create for social, creating a buzz around it and then pitching it to get essentially placement without paying for an ad in a prime time like the World Cup," Santalla said. In another real-time marketing example, the Girl Scouts re-created Neil Armstrong’s famous moon landing to celebrate the 45th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing in July. Staffers also employ social listening tools to find and respond to online conversations about the brand.
Tech-savvy selling Beyond real-time content, the Girl Scouts uses mobile payments and an app that locates nearby places where consumers can buy cookies. During "cookie season" the organization runs app install ads on Facebook and Twitter targeted at markets where cookie sales are going on. The Girl Scouts of the U.S.A. has more than 267,000 followers on Facebook and another 43,000 on Twitter. Instagram and Pinterest collectively represent another 21,000 followers. Since the bulk of Girl Scouts are under 13 years old—Facebook’s minimum age for opening an account—the organization’s social efforts target parents but play up the perspectives of scouts. "We usually lead with the girls’ stories and what they’re accomplishing," Santalla said. While cookie season generates the most social outreach (the brand even has astand-alone cookie Facebook page), the Girl Scouts also runs year-round contests and posts content regularly to keep the social engagement going. Through Sept. 8, the brand is running a contest on Facebook called GirlSports Photo Challenge. The Offerpop-powered promo asks consumers to send in pictures showing how they stay active during the summer for a chance to win gift cards and merchandise. "It has been going on a few weeks and engagement’s been crazy—I think we have over 40,000 votes, over 1,000 entrants so far," Santalla said. "It was a fun, low-lift way of keeping our fans engaged and keeping [Facebook’s] algorithm in our favor to balance out when we message out about other things that we want to resonate with our base." Facebook ads have also been used to drive traffic to the contest, and the initiative fits into a bigger marketing push that will be employed this fall to boost the organization’s recruitment efforts. Other planned media include geo-targeted Facebook ads and influencer efforts with Michelle Obama and Robin McGraw to recruit new volunteers. `
The Grand Ole Opry Gets Hip to Hashtags to Harvest a New Audience Online SEPTEMBER 3, 2014
I grew up in a rural Nevada town surrounded by barbed wire fences and farm fields stacked with bales of alfalfa. A sprawling livestock auction yard sat behind the pizza joint where I worked. Its most popular menu item was appropriately dubbed Barn Wedges. Oh, and you better believe that country music was a staple of my environment. And yet, an organization that thrust the genre into mainstream America and became a crown jewel of country culture, completely skipped my notice until recently. Starting in the 1920s the Grand Ole Opry showcased performers who were broadcast on radio. Through the decades performers have included Hank Williams, Elvis Presley, Dolly Parton and more recently Brad Paisley, Rascal Flatts, Dierks Bentley and Blake Shelton. With its 90th anniversary on the horizon, Grand Ole Opry is staking a comeback using the digital landscape to touch millennials and generations with a newfound interest in country music. I first encountered Grand Ole Opry because my 17-year-old sister posted a slew of photos to Instagram holding a CD. I was first shocked to see that she owned a tangible music medium, but her hashtag and the plethora of comments and "likes" prompted me to dig further.
Turns out, by taking a photo with an album with the hashtag #MyRoadBetween she was entering a contest hosted by Grand Ole Opry. Hashtags, brands and contests are commonplace. But a contemporary concept adopted by organization with little to no recognition among the core demographic participating in said contest struck me. The Pew Research Center has reported that 91 percent of teenagers on Instagram post “selfies.” If this many teens are posting photos of themselves to social media and with Instagram and Twitter near the top of their favorite social networks, according to Piper Jaffrey, Grand Ole Opry struck gold with its strategy. Further inspection revealed that there were scores of submissions, and a separate contest called for Instagram videos, too. (The contest was conducted on multiple platforms and Grand Ole Opry was able to aggregate the content and track it by using software of Offerpop, a client of my firm.) The key to Grand Ole Opry’s success was not just harnessing a timely trend but tailoring the campaign to appeal to a younger audience. Most marketing experts will advise companies to harness social data and build campaigns appealing to their core audience. But Grand Ole Opry accomplished more than gathering a trunk full of user-generated content and great metrics. The organization embedded its brand into the lives and networks of a generation of fans that can carry them into the future. Talk about "social security."
Creating a unique world within a social network Survey data collected by GlobalWebIndex in in late 2013 demonstrates Tumblr’s impact on users between the ages of 16 and 24,
a demographic that BusinessInsider has pointed out is difficult for brands to reach. Flooded by fashion companies, artists and indie musicians, Tumblr is a breeding ground for youth-oriented content. A common sentiment among social gurus is that those who want to make social-media networking succeed have to put in the time. Grand Ole Opry took every social network into account for its digital marketing strategy, a bold choice considering the time and content commitments companies take on with each new network engaged with. Rather than simply paste a Tumblr logo on its web page, Grand Ole Opry created a persona for the microblog labeled #thecircle. It’s packed full of video performances and interviews, making visitors feel apart of a special backstage club with exclusive access to current stars and country icons.
Treating content as a reward. Signed posters are a great social contest prize. For Grand Ole Opry, using them as leverage garnered a ton of user-generated content and engagement between social media users and the organization. But limiting fan rewards to such prizes places budget and creativity limitations, and while it’s still effective, it’s traditional, the opposite of Grand Ole Opry’s new marketing tactics. After all, there are only so many times that fans will post a photo to score a poster. Grand Ole Opry took an interesting approach to this dilemma via Twitter. Specific tweets from @opry requested 1,000 retweets by a certain time in order to unlock videos from stars such as Lucy Hale and Carrie Underwood. Fans responded in droves, requesting that their followers also participate to reach the goal.
Rather than offering a typical prize, Grand Ole Opry engaged its fans and rewarded them with in-house content in exchange for engagement. Requesting shares, likes and retweets from fans is fine, but to do so and offer them something in return is full-circle marketing at its best.
Not leaving behind faithful fans. Grand Ole Opry hasn’t forgot the loyal fans who helped the organization weather 90 years and all the changes in the country music industry. Its Facebook page shares video performances from Dolly Parton and Wynonna Judd and takes the time to honor classic artists and mediums. An effective social-marketing campaign targets multiple audiences and engages on several levels while collecting additional data, usergenerated content and increasing organizations' reach to new fans. This might seem straightforward for contemporary companies, but entities with a long history could find it hard to creatively deliver brand messaging and content to ever-changing social media users. Grand Ole Opry could have easily bitten the dust or just kept things simple and catered to a stereotypical demographic. Instead it has leaped into the digital future with tactics that other companies can learn from for their own efforts
The Video Revolution Will Not Be Televised AUGUST 28, 2014
In the ongoing fragmentation of media that has already transformed the newspaper and music industries, the television business is the biggest and perhaps last traditional media giant to be dramatically affected. Netflix and Hulu are eroding the base of this powerful industry. YouTube and Vimeo are destabilizing it. The advertising implications will be enormous as this industry is disrupted. Billions of dollars of advertising and marketing dollars will be unleashed on nascent but growing digitalvideo platforms. This migration of ad dollars is already happening in a steady trickle. But should the television studios' stranglehold on the video audience break, that trickle may become a flood.
The waning power of TV. Television certainly still holds major advertising power, but that's changing rapidly. Live TV viewership is dropping dramatically and will continue to wane asmillennials dominate viewership. The advertising impact of television (which no longer has to be viewed live) has also waned as DVRs have become prominent, letting viewers skip ads. Television advertising might experience an increase in spending with political ads being placed prior to the 2016 presidential
election and because candidate debates appear on live TV. But the longterm trend of younger viewers relying on online methods of viewing is bound to continue. Licensing is a large revenue source for televison studios but things are changing as companies like Netflix begin to develop their own original programming (witness House of Cards). And when a show is produced by a studio but broadcast online, this represents a transition to online advertising, much the way a newspaper article supported by online advertising represents a transition for publishing companies. Cable is also facing deep disruption since its lucrative bundling structure may be unraveled. As Time reported in April, "With all these changes, industry has reason to squirm. In a report last year, media analysts at the investment firm Needham & Company estimated that if all TV content were unbundled, the TV industry would take a $70 billion dollar hit, and all but 15 or 20 channels would disappear."
The new wave of digital advertising. Advertising on cable and broadcast TV is a $78 billion industry, according to Nielsen. But television ad growth is slowing even as spending on digital video advertising is increasing dramatically. It's clear that advertising is following the audience. Online video advertising received 35 billion views in December alone, according to Business Insider, and is averaging 100 percent viewership increases each month in year-over-year comparisons.
With the rise of online media comes the ability to meticulously track impressions and conversions and connect advertising directly to ecommerce. With a traditional television ad, viewership has been the prime measurement of its effectiveness. For online advertising, though, everything from clickthroughs to conversions and impressions can be gauged. The rate at which digital ad spending is growing is impressive (and is projected to double in four years). This ad growth is fueling a flourishing of streaming services like Netflix, which reported a steep increase in earnings in the second quarter of this year as the company added 1.7 million new customers in three months. The proliferation of channels and video sources is being supported by mobile consumers. Thus the annoying “push” advertising of pop-up and banner ads that consumers now largely ignore has given way to “pull” advertising that consumers actively seek out. This “pull” video advertising model has made video ads an effective online ad vehicle, averaging a click-through rate of 1.84 percent, according to Business Insider.
Future trends. This advertising revolution will not be a simple transfer from television screens to online digital sources. It will involve a transformation of how advertising is served, tracked and converted. Instead of a studio-andagency model of video development and advertising production, more online video will be organically created, crowdsourced and user generated. Viral ads will be developed not in the war rooms of highpriced ad agencies but instead hatched by ambitious creatives with an
idea, a camera, a laptop and some editing software. Stars will be minted through YouTube views and multichannel networks. Television networks will still exist, but I expect they will operate like the newspaper industry today -- with smaller budgets: They will increasing be tied into digital and social channels and no longer serve as the dominant players in the medium. The successful broadcast and cable television programming of the future will have to be nimble and innovative, capturing audience’s attention with full integration with digital channels. As the audience for television fragments across Netflix, Hulu, YouTube and multichannel networks like Fullscreen and Maker Studios, advertising will become more targeted, more data driven and more connected to social media. Artful video curation and aggregation will become a valuable commodity. I predict that as the growth of content marketing sends an increasing deluge of video into websites, mobile devices and viewers’ social media streams, the companies that manage to organize, curate and manage that overload of video will gain the trust of audiences. After all, there is only so much content a person can consume. Content fatigue will be headed off by companies that deliver only the most inspiring, relevant and targeted video content to their audience. Waywire offers a good example: The company curates videos that directly appeals to a specific audience For years now, product and service companies have been working to become content producers. Now they are realizing that they also must
be content curators. So much video is flooding the digital world that automated and efficient ways to showcase video can yield dramatic results with minimal effort. This wave of digital disruption in television will unleash a new round of innovation in video creation, curation and programming. Just like the rapid decline of newspapers set off a round of digital innovation with the arrival of companies like Slate and The Skimm and prompted newspapers like The New York Times to launch innovative digital arms like 538.com, video will also birth new companies and fresh online ventures at traditional television companies. Advertising will follow the audience into a world of mobile, social and web-based video. The video revolution will not be televised. But it will be increasingly targeted and user-generated and curated. And companies will be launched in a new digital landscape where capturing audiences fragmented across many video platforms will become the new challenge. The production and curation of video is more accessible than ever to small and midsized entrepreneurs. It can be a powerful tool for companies to gain widespread visual exposure among an audience of young consumers who are turning off television and warching video on smartphones, social networks and streaming services.
5 WAYS TO MANAGE BOTH GOOD AND BAD ONLINE REVIEWS WORRIED ABOUT YOUR REPUTATION ON YELP OR GLASSDOOR? LEARN HOW TO BUILD TRUST AND ATTRACT NEW CLIENTS--WITHOUT FEEDING THE INTERNET TROLLS. August 7, 2014 | 5:41 AM BY
CHRIS TERRILL
In a perfect world, customers would hire you based on the quality of your work, and not on the opinions of Internet users whose feedback may or may not be entirely truthful. According to an Ipsos Public Affairs survey, online ratings and reviews play a significant role in your customers’ purchase decisions. How you leverage your positive reviews, while learning from and managing your negative reviews, is critical to your business’s success. Here are five ways to ensure that online ratings and reviews can work to your business’s advantage. 1. SEEK OUT SITES THAT ONLY POST VERIFIED REVIEWS Humans are predisposed to focus on the negative. This inherent bias is why we’re able to vividly recall unpleasant experiences. Because negative events tend to elicit stronger emotions, people are more apt to share their negative experiences. However, these emotions can easily cloud their judgment and distort their perceptions of the experience. Given the ability to post reviews that
don’t require verification, it’s easy for individuals--or competitors--to embellish or misrepresent the truth without fear of recourse, especially when hiding behind a veil of anonymity. The good news is that consumers are becoming increasingly adept at recognizing false reviews, both positive and negative. Because a review is only as trustworthy as the individual posting it, many consumers are seeking out sites that verify their reviews. Joining a site that only posts verified reviews is the first step toward protecting your business from false reviews. 2. RESPOND TO NEGATIVE REVIEWS WITHOUT BECOMING DEFENSIVE Negative reviews sting, and much like negative events they elicit stronger emotions. While you might be tempted to respond to a negative review with an immediate and vigorous defense, doing so could damage your reputation more than the initial review. The best thing to do is to give yourself time to process the review before responding. When you do respond, and you should, be as diplomatic and professional as possible. Don’t be defensive and don’t blame the customer. Be apologetic if you came up short, or explain the situation if the customer misunderstood what led to the complaint. 3. USE REVIEWS TO PINPOINT AND SOLVE PROBLEMS No matter how good you are at what you do, there’s always room for improvement. Ratings and reviews give you the insights you need to make those improvements. The key is to reframe critical reviews as opportunities to evaluate and address any shortcomings in your business practices. Monitor your ratings and reviews to identify patterns. If multiple customers are criticizing certain aspects of your operations, work to address the issues raised in a timely and effective manner. At the same time, don’t overreact to negative reviews by making large-scale business decisions based on a single critical comment. 4. MAKE SURE THE SITE RANKS BUSINESSES ON REVIEWS, NOT ADVERTISING When a potential customer visits a site that provides ratings and reviews, they do so with the expectation that the reviews will be authentic and honest, regardless of how positive or negative they might be. Unfortunately, some sites allow advertising to influence their rankings.
In order to be effective, your reviews and rankings should be based solely on the opinions of your previous customers, and not how much you spend with the site hosting those reviews. If a site makes the pitch that you can improve your rankings by advertising with them, it’s time to question the legitimacy of their ranking process. 5. CONSIDER A REVIEWS AND RATINGS SITE DEDICATED TO YOUR INDUSTRY Some sites try to do it all: rating and reviewing restaurants, retailers, and professional services. That might pull in visitors, but this everything-to-everyone approach can yield inconsistent--and sometimes unsubstantiated--reviews from customers who aren’t as knowledgeable as those who post on industry-specific sites. While it’s a good idea to expand your reach by posting your business profile across multiple sites, focus your efforts on those that are directly related to your industry, specifically those that screen member businesses and verify all ratings and reviews before publishing them. --Chris Terrill is the CEO of HomeAdvisor, the nation’s No. 1 resource for pre-screen home improvement specialists. Terrill has years of leadership experience in the Internet business, including executive positions at Match.com, Nutrisystems.com, and Blockbuster.com.
Beach Read Recommendations of the Guiltless Sort By Arianne Cohen August 01, 2013
4 Ways to Rewire the Corporate Brain to Compete in the 21st Century JULY 11, 2014
The era of the robber baron is long gone and the days of the rapacious capitalist are dwindling. The corporate world that once rewarded aggression and strong-armed business dealings is now refocusing on collaboration, transparency and corporate responsibility. This amounts to an absolute cultural about-face for many companies -- a rewiring of the corporate brain to reward skills that net a more collaborative workplace. Most companies are still only halfway through this transition. And many are still searching for the tools and the tactics to power their success. The bean counters have been slow to quantify the impact of such changes on the bottom line. But turnover rates, customer loyalty, brand image and project accountability for companies demonstrating this new mind-set may eventually show that a sustainable culture and profitability are the new yin and yang of business. Here are four ways that companies can reframe their corporate cultureto be more flexible amid all the technological innovation, globalization and constant communication of today's business world:
1. Help employees become inspired by the “why” of work. Managers and executives sometimes fail to grasp the motivation for why people work. Humans are complex creatures, thriving on reaffirmation, praise, the inspiration of working in a tight-knit team or the ambition of changing people’s lives by building great products. They work for a paycheck, too. But truly inspired workers are motivated by much more. Understand that to unlock the secret to motivating employees and connecting them in a team. A 2013 Gallup study quantified the immense benefits of an engaged workforce. Companies with highly engaged employees outperformed firms with lower engagement by 10 percent in customer ratings, 22 percent in profitability and 21 percent in productivity. They also saw significantly lower turnover and absenteeism and fewer safety incidents and product defects. If employees are adrift in a work environment not understanding the why, they will likely have a morale problem. Connect employees to the “why” and motivation, innovation and great customer service will follow. The personal “why” and the company “why” should be aligned and complimentary. 2. Make philanthropy a company cornerstone. After the Great Recession, Gordon Gecko’s “greed is good” motto from the movie Wall Street seems reckless. Today, many consumers and employees are aligning with companies dedicated to philanthropy and corporate responsibility. Forward-thinking companies are weaving philanthropy into all aspects of corporate culture and discovering that giving can have a positive impact
on the way they develop talent, retain employees, promote leadership and serve customers. Giving is a critical way some corporations build teams, encourage leadership, recruit and retain employees and connect with customers and their communities. Philanthropy is “R&D for business” and a “growth strategy,” says Doug Conant, a former Campbell Soup Co. CEO: “The more we leveraged our business resources to deliver social value to the communities around us, the more engaged our employees became and the better we performed in the marketplace.” Fifty-nine percent of Fortune 500 companies increased philanthropic giving from 2007 to 2012, according to the Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy, whose member firms gave $14 billion to charity in 2012. As chairman of that committee, Conant sees philanthropy as a staff development tool, a way to connect with community and “as incubators for promising ideas and a mechanism for understanding both community and corporate needs.” 3. Build teams that learn and adapt together. The every-man-forhimself outlook is being replaced by an ethic that prizes the success of a team over the accomplishments of single employees. If individual survival and personal reward are the focus, team members will build silos and create a “scarcity” mentality even in the face of abundance of opportunity. Teams succeed through collaboration, effective communication and adaptation. One of the greatest achievements for a company is creating selfsustaining teams whose members learn and grow on their own. Fostering a company culture where ideas can germinate and thrive
organically and where team members adapt and advance by interacting with others is the hallmark of a self-sustaining work environment. A team structure where members mutually benefit from collaboration is critical for a company’s bottom line as well as staffers' sense of connection. 4. Streamline communication. Effective communication is a key trait that companies look for in a 21st-century work world. Yet today's workplaces are saddled by communication overload. Often, employees these days communicate too much, incessantly sending email, setting up conference calls and conducting staff meetings and strategy sessions. High-performing teams communicate effectively by balancing communication with action. They target their communication to be actionable. If companies were to step back and analyze their business operations, communication is an area where streamlining and sharpening could save time and boost effectiveness. According to a report by international training firm 360 Solutions, a business with 100 employees experiences on average 17 hours of downtime a week, lost to having to clarify communication. This translates into an annual cost of nearly $530,000. The report also noted that 38 percent of staff feedback hinders employee performance. Wading through emails, sitting through long, unfocused staff meetings and overbooking a week with conference calls can sap productivity and motivation and make it hard to decipher what's truly important.
HOW GOPRO IS TRANSFORMING ADVERTISING AS WE KNOW IT HARNESSING CONTENT CREATED BY THE USER IS NOT JUST AN AFFORDABLE MARKETING STRATEGY; IT'S ALSO PRETTY POWERFUL STUFF.
BY KEVIN BOBOWSKI GoPro’s rising stock prices after its initial public offering (IPO) last week just go to show how powerful and versatile user-generated content can be. Some people still think of user-generated content as shaky videos or filtered photos, only good for sharing with family or friends on social media. But that is an outdated concept, and one which GoPro would dispel. Many media platforms are proving that user-generated content has the quality to captivate audiences. Video cameras affixed to the helmets of skiers, snowboarders, and BASE jumpers generate footage for the slickest television commercials, and Instagram photos from fashion fans are now the center of online catalogues for major fashion brands. USER-GENERATED VALUE
Everyone got a glimpse of the power of user-generated content thanks to GoPro’s recent financial disclosures leading up to its public offering. The company more than doubled its net income from 2010 to 2011 to $24.6 million but only spent $50,000 more in marketing costs to do it, according to Wall St. Daily. And GoPro repeated the feat in 2013, increasing marketing costs by only $41,000, but making $28 million more in net income. Embedded in those numbers is the multi-million-dollar marketing and advertising value of user-generated content. In place of an art director, acting cast, and team of videographers, GoPro simply hands a wearable camera to an amazing athlete and
gets back advertising and marketing gold. Regular customers have become advertisers on a smaller scale, shooting high-quality video, loading it onto YouTube and social networks, and advertising the capabilities of the cameras to friends, family, and complete strangers. THE NEW MEDIA REALITY
But GoPro wants to be much more than a hardware-maker with a built-in, affordable marketing strategy. The company wants to evolve into the user-generated media company of the future. And in that regard, GoPro is in the vanguard of a new media reality. Viewers can tune in to a full GoPro channel on Virgin America Airlines or stream the video through an Xbox. What viewers see when they tune in is one of the most remarkable, branded video experiences available. Viewers get a front seat to the adventures of world-class skiers and snowboarders, BASE jumpers, and mountain bikers, not to mention a whole range of video outside of the world of extreme sports, like a stunning recent video of an African Pelican learning how to fly. Technological advancements have made user-generated content both compelling and high-quality, and GoPro proves that a tiny camera, in the hands of the right people, can create captivating content that will gain an audience no matter what purpose it is used for: social media marketing, advertising, or television programming. GoPro is just one high-profile example of this fast-growing trend. Fashion retailers and consumer-packaged goods companies are harnessing Instagram photos, Vine videos, and other forms of consumer content to spread their brand message on television, in online ads, and in marketing material. User-generated content is the next marketing and advertising frontier for brands. Its wide acceptance is due to the fact that it is both powerful and affordable. But most of all, it is relatable in a way that polished, directed, scripted advertising is not. GoPro’s valuation is based partly on the high-quality video camera that it makes. But even more than that, investors are intrigued by the potential of the video camera manufacturer to blossom into a full-fledged media company driven almost entirely by user-generated video.
For the brands that are spending big advertising budgets, the ascendance of GoPro is also a reminder of an evolution in marketing that they must adapt to: the attainable and largely untapped marketing and advertising potential of user-generated content. --Kevin Bobowski is vice president of marketing at Offerpop. The company creates a global social-marketing campaign platform that helps audiences connect with companies' brands.
3 Alternative Tech Startup Cities With Less Traffic, More Housing (Infographic) BY JOHN SOLARI | May 8, 2014| 7 Comments
Silicon Valley’s powerful entrepreneurial economy has resulted in some major downsides: gridlocked traffic, high housing prices and a growing and aggressive tech backlash. Today, three cities previously known more as vacation destinations are now legitimate alternatives to Silicon Valley life at a much more affordable price. For the adventurous startup or mature tech company, there's life beyond red taillights, long commutes and protestors blockading buses. Las Vegas, Denver and Reno, Nev., mix together a vibrant startup culture with world-class recreation or entertainment. And they all do it in places with plenty of affordable housing, a few million fewer highway-clogging cars and minus the debate over gentrification. Related: What Elon Musk Really Thinks of 'Silicon Valley' 1. Las Vegas. Tony Hsieh gets credit for jump-starting Las Vegas’ startup scene with his $350 million Downtown Project, but the city has grown into much more than his personal project. Switch Communication’s founder, Rob Roy, is pumping money and energy into the InNEVation Center, a collaboration space that delivers some of the fastest Internet speeds in the world (courtesy of his company's SuperNAP data center) and serves as a meeting place for startup and economic development events. Las Vegas’ Downtown Container Park, where an enormous metal praying mantis sculpture shoots flames out of its antennae, hosts live music events along with unique retail and dining spots. It's helping draw new hospitality sector investment like Seth Schorr’s new ultramodern Downtown Grand hotel, a gaming, dining and entertainment venue.
While the VegasTech Fund, founded by Hsieh, is a big influencer in town, early-stage and maturing Las Vegas companies can seek financing from the Las Vegas Valley Angels, Brennan Capital and state sources like the Battle Born Venture Fund and the Silver State Opportunities Fund. Competitive advantages: Las Vegas is an hour's flight away from California's two biggest population centers and the center of the convention and trade show universe. Representatives of the largest companies in the world touch down for business networking and product launches. Las Vegas has affordable housing and business costs, anchor businesses like Zappos and Switch Communications and a year-round industry-event schedule. Median home prices are $164,700, according to Zillow; about half a million dollars less than San Jose's. Related: Tech Firms Seeking Talent Spring for Spacious, Luxe Quarters 2. Denver. A healthy startup ecosystem includes companies of all maturity levels, whereby ones that have grown from shoestring outfits to market leaders might reinvest in the community. And Denver has businesses in fast-growing industries and companies large and small, young and mature. Denver-based businesses like HomeAdvisor, now a subsidiary of IAC with 1,200 employees, participate in community-building events like Denver Startup Week. At the center of Denver’s startup activity is Galvanize, a 30,000-square-foot entrepreneurial campus including a venture capital funding firm, as well as collaborative co-working space and a social hub for events and education. Companies with origins in the Denver area include Mapquest, Photobucket, Rally Software, Cloudzilla and Forkly. Firms like Grotech Ventures, with offices in Denver, are financing startups and are joined by large Boulder-based funds like the Foundry Group. Competitive advantage: Denver is located in a mountainous region that many consider more of a vacation destination than a business hub. Indeed Colorado ski resorts are just down the highway and the area's mountain biking and hiking trails are virtually endless. Denver offers all of this, while retaining an affordable cost of living. Home prices, at a median level of $254,800, are higher than in Reno, Nev., and Las Vegas, but still less than half the price of San Jose's. Related: The 10 Best Cities for Buying or Selling a Home 3. Reno’s allure lies with its geographic location, affordability and emerging and energetic startup scene. It’s a morning’s drive from Silicon Valley and just a half-hour car trip from the ski slopes and beaches of Lake Tahoe. That mix of business friendliness, quality of life and entrepreneurial energy is attracting small, scrappy startups and the satellite offices of some of the world's largest technology companies. The Biggest Little City has transitioned from a gambling mecca into an entrepreneurial hot spot. Tesla Motors is eyeing the city to house its new “gigafactory,” a multibillon-dollar battery-production headquarters; Apple has already built a data center there and Intuit, Microsoft Licensing and Drone America are headquartered in town. Homegrown startups are sprouting downtown. Reno’s Startup
Row along the Truckee River features cloud-computing companies and fitness-software outfits, a vibrant co-working collective and a hardware developer that builds microcontrollers. Reno's vibrant entrepreneurial culture includes 1 Million Cups events, hackathons and startup weekends all year long. Marmot Properties is remodeling and updating scores of Reno homes in central locations to house the influx of entrepreneurs. Capital needed to fuel startup activity is also available: The Silver State Opportunities Fund is investing $50 million in Nevada-based business. And the Battle Born Venture Fund is a state fund that provides critical funding for early-stage, high-growth companies in Nevada. The Reno Accelerator Fund invests in early-stage companies in the capital. Competitive advantage: Reno’s home prices are a world away from Silicon Valley's. The median Reno home price is $198,700, according to Zillow (less than a third of San Jose's) so nearby tech startups and maturing companies don’t have to worry about employees struggling to find homes or commuting long hours. Reno’s tax environment is considered business friendly. And city's startup scene is alongside a downtown whitewater kayak park with terrific skiing and a web of mountain bike trails nearby. Plus, Reno’s thriving bar, restaurant, coffee and entertainment scene includes Campo, named one of the nation’s best new restaurants by Esquire in 2012. Below see an infographic created by the Economic Development Agency for Western Nevada to market Reno's startup culture.
Follow Entrepreneurs 4/22/2014 @ 9:40AM 4,228 views
How Four Eco Brands Are Using Social Media Marketing Effectively Comment Now Follow Comments
Environmentally conscious companies don’t just sell products, they promote a mission and sustain a lifestyle that benefits their customers and simultaneously makes the world a better place. It is natural then that when these “triple bottom line” businesses take to social media, they use their authentic voice and positioning to simultaneously promote philanthropy and increase ecommerce sales. However, according to Offerpop, a NYC-based social marketing platform, the most effective green brands “not only raise awareness for causes on multiple networks, but tailor their campaigns to leverage the visual web and user generated content by allowing users to submit conscious content, give back and gain exclusive information.” Here are four sustainable brands that are doing it well: 1.
TOMS
TOMS gained popularity with their “one for one” policy (where they donate one pair of shoes to a child in need for every pair purchased). They now have over 2 Million twitter followers. They’ve captured that audience using a variety of social tools and campaigns that keep philanthropy on the forefront of their fans’ minds. Best Campaign: One Day Without Shoes
TOMS annual One Day Without Shoes campaign asks patrons to go barefoot to raise “global awareness for children’s health and education,” and they are rocking it on social media. Not only do they have a dedicated page on their website, but they host Instagram meet-ups in several social-savvy cities, offer a toolkit for those who want to participate, and a Pinterest board (with 33k+ followers) full of shareable fact photos and participant photos. TOMS delivers a fantastic example of a social awareness campaign that actively engages fans and spreads its message far and wide. 2. EcoTools EcoTools is a company that offers quality eco-friendly beauty products and gives back to great causes. EcoTools utilizes social content from their team and fans to create unique social offerings. Best Campaign: Hashtag #Ecotools EcoTools used their brand hashtag #Ecotools to aggregate Instagram content from their fans and share it via the Hashtag Gallery tool from Offerpop. They also use their team of experts to share
tips and reward fans across platforms. They know how to create useful branded content extremely well. They have a $10k giveback program for customers to win money to donate back to charities of their choice. 3. Recyclebank. Recyclebank is a company that rewards people with deals and discounts for taking everyday green actions. They are leveraging their position as green-lifestyle educators to be a hub for social buzz. Best Campaign: LivingEarthMonth
Recyclebank is using Earth Month (April) to create community awareness on social media under #LivingEarthMonth. They have created a microsite that features content from Twitter and Instagram and aims to inspire readers to make the most of Earth Month. The site also directs viewers back to their website to purchase products that are environmentally-friendly. 4. Loomstate. Loomstate is an eco-friendly clothing company that has a lot of projects to help make the planet a better place. They excel at blogging and their social content is perfect for sustainable hipsters to share and like. Best Campaign: Act Natural Blog Loomstate offers easy-to-read, interesting blog posts. Content marketing is a key feeder of social media marketing; they go hand-in-hand. Many companies attempt to create blogs that impact readers, but few accomplish it the way Loomstate has. Their blog posts are relevant to the eco/sustainable current culture, and feature easy-to-digest bullets on how to get involved and
how Loomstate is supporting each particular cause. They are a great example of how effective ongoing, well-composed content can work for a brand’s messaging. All four of these companies are using social media for social good and engagement. They are proof that the two can be done in conjunction to create the most impactful messaging for brands and our planet. Â
Is Your Co-Founder 'the One'? 7 Ways to Tell
BY MINDA ZETLIN
You'll spend more time with your business partner than your spouse--make sure you pick the right one. March 28, 2014 For years I had a friend who kept suggesting he and I should start a cafe‐book store together. It was tempting in a way‐‐I loved the idea of a cozy place full of people reading, chatting, and sipping lattes. But I always said no. Though I enjoyed this friend, I knew he was always looking for get‐rich‐ quick endeavors. He seemed to expect the greatest return for the least effort. Would he put in the long hours it takes to get a successful business off the ground? Unlikely. Would I wind up putting in extra hours to make up the slack? Likely. That was an easy decision, but often it's not so obvious whether a friend, acquaintance, or co‐ worker would or would not make a good business partner. Yet it's not a choice you can afford to flub. Not only will picking the right partner affect your very livelihood, for a while at least, you will spend more time with him or her than you do with your spouse. How can you tell if someone is "the one"? For the past 21 years, Bill John and Lain Hensley have been partners in Odyssey Teams, which creates leadership development and team building programs. Here's their advice: Try before you buy. Not every potential business couple has this luxury. But if you can, spend some time working together in the business before you both commit. In Odyssey Teams' case, John was already running the company. Hensley attended one of its programs, became friends with John, and began helping out, first as a volunteer, then as a paid contractor. John promised a month's work, then a few months, then a few more. Hensley had recently graduated from college and wanted to be a business owner. At the time, Odyssey Teams couldn't afford to pay either man a substantial salary, so making Hensley a partner was both a way to recognize his contributions and make sure that he stuck around. "He was just so helpful that it made sense," John says.
Share off hours. John and Hensley's relationship was cemented not only at Odyssey Teams programs, but also while fly fishing, snowboarding, and building things together. "We're both project‐a‐holics and we like swinging hammers and building stuff," John says. It was during these extracurricular activities that they both learned how compatible they were. Travel together. Anyone who's ever taken a trip with a friend knows that there's no quicker way to find out just how well you do or don't get along. "Take a trip to the Grand Canyon and see who wants to stay on schedule and who's looking to go off and see the world's biggest ball of string," Hensley suggests. You'll learn if you have a real connection, he adds. "When there's down time, do you have healthy conversations? Do you talk about how you want to change the world or do you turn the radio up? You can learn a lot about someone in a short time." Look for matching values... One thing John and Hensley learned in their off hours is that each brought the same high standards and energy to what they did. "He was a good fisherman and I was a good fisherman," Hensley says. "He would build something well and so would I. If we were going to run a race, we would both expect to do well." That translated into a similar work ethic at Odyssey Teams. "We would both have the same high expectation for what we were going to give customers," he says. "And we can both work from 7 in the morning to 9 at night without complaining." ...But dovetailing skills. If having similar values and expectations makes for a solid partnership, having different abilities makes for a successful one. "Now that I look back, I can see how perfectly Bill and I complement each other," Hensley says. "Bill is really good at Web stuff and financial complexity, where I'm more on the people side. I love the delivery but I don't have the patience to work through the detail side of the business." Decide about decisions. One of the most challenging aspects of any business partnership is determining how decisions will be made if the partners don't agree. John and Hensley learned this the hard way when they took on a third partner who had academic training in their area but turned out to be a terrible fit.
"If we were in a debate, he would reach a point where he would say, 'I'm doing it with or without you!'" Hensley recalls. "Bill and I would just look at each other. We couldn't process that. We were a team." Mercifully, the third partner soon departed. But the experience taught John and Hensley the importance of creating a delineated decision‐making process. "We're wrestling with that right now," John says. Pick someone who's fun to be with. In retrospect, both partners say, the fun was missing with that third partner. And it's the single most important element, they agree. "There has to be that X factor," Hensley says. "You need some of that friend side where you have a relationship that will survive whatever conflict comes your way. If it's just a business deal, then when those conflicts arise, the off‐ramp will come up and you might make that choice." "To me, it was all about character outside of work," John adds. "I realized that if I partnered with Lain it was going to be fun on this journey."
3 Companies Share How They Stay True to Company Culture Amidst Rapid Growth BY JOHN SOLARI | March 27, 2014|
Most companies start off steeped in culture. They begin as programmers pulling all-nighters writing code or scrappy advertising agencies teeming with wild ideas hashed out over informal brainstorming sessions. But as companies grow, and specifically when they grow rapidly, structure sets in -- often at the culture's expense. Soon a company that was founded on a wildly creative, loose and fun company culture runs the risk of becoming bureaucratic, stale and uninspired. More and more companies are realizing that rapid growth when not paired with an equivalent emphasis on company culture, poses a threat to a company’s ability to recruit and retain employees, innovate, inspire creativity and build brand loyalty. Feeling like your company may fall in the same trap? Check out our advice from two fast-growing companies and one corporate culture expert. 1. Ditch the hierarchy and focus on a flat company culture. Offerpop is a rapidly growing company in a fast-moving industry. Based in New York City and backed by venture investors, the social marketing software-as-a-service company has added more than 45 employees and opened offices in London and San Francisco in the last year. Related: Creating and Keeping a Positive Company Culture But walk into their three-floor offices in Manhattan and you will see company CEO and founder Wendell Lansford sitting next to an Offerpop employee six months out of college. This flat company culture, room for career advancement and company sports teams are all key to Offerpop’s success in recruiting and retaining employees in a market that has them compete directly with high-paying industries like investment banking. “The company is very flat in terms of the work chart,” says Kevin Bobowski, vice president of marketing for Offerpop. “Informally, it is an incredibly flat structure because anyone can come up and talk directly to the CEO, co-founders and executives.”
Besides having a flat culture, Offerpop builds on that camaraderie by fielding soccer and basketball teams, which allow employees to interact outside of the work environment. They hold trivia nights at the office, and when they launch a new product, they celebrate with a company-wide Poplaunch party where popcorn is served and different departments mix and mingle. “It allows people to connect, which is harder as the company grows,” says Bobowski. The emphasis on a vibrant workplace has paid off for Offerpop. Some of the company’s more successful new employees are often hired from referrals, as Offerpop builds a culture of “doers, not delegators,” says Bobowski. 2. Instill passion and personal values. Reno, Nev.-based digital agency Noble Studios has grown 40 percent in the last year, a year after being named one of fastest-growing companies in the nation. Much of the company’s rapid revenue growth came from an early company culture formed without a thought toward the bottom line. Related: Making Gratitude Part of Your Company Culture “We care about our clients -- money was the last thing that we actually thought about,” says Noble Studios founder Jarrod Lopiccolo. “We love creating and we love giving value.” One way the company does this is through book clubs, where teams read and discuss the same text. Team leads pick the books with an eye for topics that specific teams needs to delve into. The book clubs help align teams, spur discussion and ingrain a culture of learning in the company. The book clubs are one component of what Noble Studios has become known for in Reno -- building the talent and knowledge of a homegrown team in a second-tier technology city. “A lot of the talent we had to grow,” says Lipoccolo. “But they had to have the right ingredients -- the ability to think long term and not short term. It’s exciting for companies to think that secondary markets can foster and maintain this level of talent.” 3. Remember the big picture. Odyssey Teams is a Chico, Calif.-based corporate training company that has worked with some of the globe’s largest enterprises to build and maintain culture. Related: Google Employees Confess the Worst Things About Working at Google One of the fundamental ideas behind Odyssey Teams success is that many employees have lost track of the “why” of their work. They feel lost in a sea of co-workers all dealing with one miniscule portion of a very large task and fall into the uninspired monotony and ritual of completing their work day after day. Odyssey Teams breaks through that apathy by reconnecting their audiences with the reason they work, the difference they can make and the value of communication and collaboration in the workplace.
That says, Odyssey Teams co-founder Lain Hensley realizes that companies cannot always keep the same culture they had when they founded. They must be willing to evolve and adapt as they grow. “You can't retain company culture when you are growing, you must carefully architect its evolution and surrender to the fact that it will never be the same as it was in the past,” says Hensley. “Look forward and build something new that would put any startup, like you used to be, out of business in a flash.” Hensley says that good company culture does not always mean a conflict-free environment. But strong cultures can survive conflict, and even benefit from it. “You need explosive ingredients to make a dynamite team, so be ready to work carefully and deal with a few explosions now and again. If that happens you are on the right track,” says Hensley.
Nightly News | February 24, 2014
Not Your Grandma’s Quilt: How to Speed Up a Timeless Art Form Jenny Doan at the Missouri Star Quilt Company can teach anyone how to make a quilt in a day.
1/31/2014 10:30:00 PM
Internet Speed-Quilting Queen Jenny Doan If you want to learn how to make a quilt in a day, Jenny Doan can teach you. WSJ’s Jim Carlton takes a look at what makes her videos so popular, from the ”Jelly Roll Race” to the “Disappearing Nine Patch.”
Entrepreneur Stitches Together a Quilting Business Short cuts and video tutorials boost an outfit in Missouri By JIM CARLTON CONNECT Updated Jan. 31, 2014 10:39 p.m. ET If you want to learn how to make a quilt in a day, Jenny Doan can teach you. WSJ's Jim Carlton takes a look at what makes her videos so popular, from the "Jelly Roll Race" to the "Disappearing Nine Patch."
HAMILTON, Mo.—This tiny farm town used to be known as the home of James Cash Penney Jr., founder of the namesake department store chain. These days, it is better known in some circles as the home of Jenny Doan. Those would be quilting circles. Over the past few years, Mrs. Doan, 57 years old, has become a veritable superstar of the craft. Her YouTube tutorials on how to make quilts have drawn as many as a million viewers, some from as far away as South Africa. Her family's Missouri Star Quilt Co. gets as many as 30,000 orders a month for pre-cut patches and other quilting supplies. The 5-year-old company has become the secondlargest employer in this town of 1,800, its operations covering a patchwork of formerly vacant downtown buildings that include a "sleep and sew" retreat hotel. Fans stop Mrs. Doan for autographs. "I can barely go to Wal-Mart without someone recognizing me," she says. The key to Mrs. Doan's popularity: she appeals to "instant gratification" quilters. "I don't teach people how to be the best quilter," she says. "I teach them how to do it the easiest." Instead of the weeks or months often required to complete a quilt, Mrs. Doan's method teaches how to make one in as little as a day—by using a variety of pre-cut fabric patches a quilter otherwise would have to painstakingly snip out and stitch together. She also supplies the materials to do so.
Jenny Doan, star of YouTube tutorials on quilting. Her Missouri Star Quilt Co. channel draws as many as a million viewers. Jim
Carlton//The Wall Street Journal
"I'll show you something that makes it look like you worked really hard," she says. That simpler process was the appeal for Carmen Leticia Attie, a psychotherapist from Mexico City, who learned to quilt in 2010 by watching Mrs. Doan's videos. She also found Mrs. Doan's breezy style less intimidating than that of other quilting tutors. "She makes you feel as if it is not only possible, but easy." Some quilters reject the shortcuts, saying it takes away from the history of the craft. "Traditional quilting is the historical way to do it," said Linda Courtney, a shopkeeper from Stewartsville, Mo., who learned quilting from her mother. Bonnie Browning, executive show director of the American Quilter's Society, said interest in quilting has been on the rise, especially people wanting to learn via the Internet. One reason Mrs. Doan is so successful, she said, is she was one of the first quilters to start making online tutorials. Today, there are several, teaching various approaches. "You know what, there's a place for everyone in the quilter's world," said Mrs. Browning, whose group is based in Paducah, Ky. Among America's estimated 21 million-plus quilters, Mrs. Doan is a relative newbie. She didn't take up the hobby until 1997, shortly after she and her husband, Ron, left California to
move to this town 65 miles northeast of Kansas City, Mo., with their seven children. "We literally picked a place in the middle of the U.S.," she says. Her husband landed a job as a machinist for a local newspaper, but by 2008 his shop had been cut from 25 people to five. "It wasn't a question of if I lost my job, but when," says Mr. Doan, 60. Concerned for their parents' future, two of their grown children, Al Doan and Sarah Galbraith, that year took out a $36,000 loan to buy their mother a professional quilting machine. "We were thinking if we didn't do something, Mom is living in our basement when she gets old," says Mr. Doan, 31. To accommodate the 12-foot-long machine, the younger Mr. Doan and his sister spent $24,000 buying a former antique store for their mother to work in. Not long after she got it up and running, Mrs. Doan says, her family noticed quilting searches were a hot topic on the Internet. Enlarge Image
"Al said, 'Mom, we need to do tutorials,' " she recalled. "I said, 'Sure. What's a tutorial?' " Their first, shot in her cluttered shop in February 2009, didn't go well. Mrs. Doan tripped on an electrical cord and broke her leg. She still managed to grimace through the video. "She was so awkward," her son says. Subsequent efforts were better. Mrs. Doan turned on the charm, sometimes hamming it up. She started an "Iron Quilter" competition, mimicking the Food Network's "Iron Chef" cooking contest, with two of her daughters squaring off in samurai-style bandannas. About 500 people sent in pictures of entries. In the precise craft of sewing, Mrs. Doan isn't always the most polished instructor, but that just seems to add to her appeal. "One time, she was making a quilt block but she almost cut it wrong‌and she laughed and said, 'How many of you were saying: NO, No‌don't do
that!'" said Monique Atkinson, a 53-year-old quilter from Quebec. "I thought it was just hilarious!" In 2009, Al Doan and his family decided Missouri Star could be a serious business. They noticed that his mother's video fans would want to use the precise fabric she showed in a tutorial. So they began stocking up on those fabrics to sell. "One day, we got eight sales in one day," Mr. Doan recalled. "We were so excited." Almost five years later, Missouri Star sells an average of 1,000 orders a day. Mr. Doan won't divulge the company's revenue, but noted the business invested $750,000 last year to upgrade its buildings, and now employs 80 workers. Along the way, Hamilton has become a tourism destination for the quilting crowd. Most days, 50 to 100 visitors arrive to meet Mrs. Doan and members of her family in their 5,000square-foot main shop. City Administrator Dale Wallace says the tourism is great, and that maybe the town just needs to patch up its array of amenities. "For example, we really need to find something for the men to do," he said of the husbands who sometimes come in tow with their quilting spouses. "Maybe we'll put in a gun shop." For now, Hamilton Hardware, once the location of the 500th department store in Mr. Penney's retail chain, serves as a way station for bored spouses. "The quilters don't come in, but their husbands do," said owner Eddie Ernat. "We have some pretty neat conversations."
The Second Screen Super Bowl
Brands bet big on hashtags to convert television viewers into a social media audience By Kevin Bobowski
January 31, 2014, 2:54 PM EST
As those $4 million, 30-second ads flash across flatscreen TVs this Super Bowl Sunday, brands that bet big on the final NFL game of the season will be more focused on what is happening on millions of small smartphone, tablet and laptop screens across the nation. This year, more brands than ever will use their high-dollar ad slots to deliver a halfminute pitch convincing consumers to interact with them on social media. It’s what marketers have long been calling the second screen audience, and this Super Bowl will reveal how important this social media audience is to advertisers during the largest live television event of the year. The momentum has been building for several years now. In 2012, only 7 percent of Super Bowl ads contained hashtags, but last year that number climbed to 50 percent, according to MarketingLand.com. In 2014, hashtags are expected to overtake corporate website mentions, according to Web-strategist.com. Several large trends are converging to fuel this phenomenon. Television’s power is waning, making must-see TV that consumers choose to watch live (without the use of a DVR) more valuable to advertisers than ever before. But as the price tags for these live TV spots rise, brands want something more than 30 seconds of TV exposure for their $4 million. They are finding that extra value on social media. And most are using
hashtags—the symbols that unlock a connection across all social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Vine—as the mechanism that taps consumers into their social media channels. Brands that use social media correctly are reaping a lengthened period of influence from their Super Bowl ads. They are starting social media conversations before, during and after the game. Adobe research shows that “visits and page views to companies that advertise on TV during the Super Bowl show a 20 percent increase in visits on the day of the game and maintain higher than average traffic for a week following the game.” H&M has already jump started the social media engagement days before the Super Bowl, giving their fans the opportunity to choose the ending to a Super Bowl spot featuring David Beckham by voting for “#covered” or “#uncovered.” The Super Bowl showcases an advertising world in the throes of deep, systemic changes. The one-way broadcasting of advertising messages to a somewhat passive audience is evolving into a much more interactive advertising and marketing experience. Brands are conversing with customers, exchanging ideas, and soliciting content through social media. More and more, traditional advertising is becoming a billboard, pointing consumers toward social media, where more personal layer of marketing, advertising and interaction closes the deal with consumers. Once consumers engage with them online, brands have many more targeted ways to convert a transaction that is now only a click away. The Super Bowl is still the king of American advertising events. But as hashtag after hashtag flashes across the screen on Sunday, it will be clear that the world’s largest brands already realize that the second screens glowing in the room are the heirs to the throne. Kevin Bobowski (@bobowski) is the vp of marketing for Offerpop, a New York-based social marketing software company that powered the first use of a hashtag in a Super Bowl commercial in 2011, in the '#ProgressIs' campaign by auto manufacturer client Audi.
THE MEETING PROFESSIONAL
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EUROPEAN ECONOMIC REBOUND
DECEMBER 2013
CANFEST
Crafting and Growing a Partnership A popular Nevada-based canned beer festival is growing alongside the burgeoning craft brewing industry thanks to a new venue partnership. BY ROB COTTER
THE RECENT BOOM IN CRAFT BREWING has been giving beer connoisseurs extra reasons to work up a thirst. Sales in the U.S. are up 15 percent in the past year, and growth potential is huge for the nearly 2,500 craft breweries making inroads into the US$100 billion beer industry. Many festivals, such as CANFEST—“The Annual, Original Canned Beer Festival,” held in August 2013 at the Peppermill Resort Spa Casino in Reno, Nevada—have sprung up as part of the beer revolution. These events offer a sure- ire way to get word about a new brew lowing to a wider audience. “CANFEST started in 2009 as the only festival in the world strictly for canned beer,” says Connie Aguilar, CANFEST event producer and head of strategic communications at digital engagement irm The Abbi Agency. “A trend in craft beer was happening at that time, and beer festivals started becoming really popular. Out of that the little stepchild that emerged was canned craft beer, so we put on the idea for CANFEST.” Establishing a ledgling niche idea in a growing industry placed a number of demands directly on the event organizer, but these de-
mands were met through a strong partnership with a new host venue. “We saw that people inside of and beyond Reno were very interested in CANFEST, and so each year we continued to do it and knew that we could keep growing it,” Aguilar says. “But we grew out of the venues, from a little theater to one of the bigger ballrooms to an event center. Going to Peppermill in 2013 changed everything.” Peppermill of icials were able to raise CANFEST’s pro ile through the direct use of their client database, an initiative that led to an increase of attendance by 600 (30 percent), one of several aspects of the event that saw a dramatic improvement due to the new partnership. Securing Growth Another partnership coup for the event came through the venue assuming responsibility for security, freeing the organizer to focus on growing the entertainment.
“Our security team is well versed in crowd and alcohol management and all trained from the medical side,” says Pat Flynn (MPI At-Large member), executive director of hotel operations and sales for Peppermill. “We took on the responsibility to ID everybody that walked through the door and ensure that everybody that came into the venue was of legal drinking age.” Safe and secure in the new surroundings, eager beer lovers were this year served up a whole new entertainment program to complement the expanded selection of ine craft beverages on offer from almost 50 breweries. “The Peppermill provided a full buffet of great food in our VIP section—there was a band playing, a DJ was in from the resort’s nightclub and we also had a ‘silent disco’ that we recruited from San Francisco, with around 50 pairs of headphones,” Aguilar says. “We had the ability to add these elements since we could breathe easy knowing the Peppermill was taking care of security.”
BEER INDUSTRY 2012
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WHAT IS A CRAFT BEER? An American craft brewer is small, independent and traditional. SMALL: Annual production of beer less than 6 million barrels. Beer production is attributed to a brewer according to the rules of alternating proprietorships. Flavored malt beverages are not considered beer for purposes of this definition. INDEPENDENT: Less than 25 percent of the craft brewery is owned or controlled (or equivalent economic interest) by an alcoholic beverage industry member who is not a craft brewer. TRADITIONAL: A brewer who has either an all malt flagship (the beer which represents the greatest volume among that brewer’s brands) or has at least 50 percent of its volume in either all malt beers or in beers which use adjuncts to enhance rather than lighten flavor. Source: Brewers Association
A successful understanding between venue and organizer tends to be the perfect pairing in the meeting industry, with communication at the core of their relationship.
No Spillage A “no spillage” attitude to waste was another success stemming from the partnership, realized through the venue taking care of signage and info sharing and the organizer’s responsibility for direct waste collection. “We’re really big on digital signage, so that there’s not any waste factor when it comes to poster boards and podiums,” Flynn says. “Throughout the whole property there’s just a ton of digital signage that we use to get the message out to our hotel guests. In addition, at check-in we inform guests of what’s going on while they’re here.” The Abbi Agency then takes care of the recycling that does need to be conducted. “We work with a group in the community that ensures every single can is recycled,” Aguilar says. “We love canned beer because it’s better for the environment; we aim to make sure that not one beer can ends up in the regular garbage.”
Bikes for Beer Extending the “no spillage” ethos to CSR, organizers also reached out to the local community through their “bike drive” initiative, seeking donations of unwanted bikes to the NFP Reno Bike Project (with each donor receiving a free ticket to CANFEST). The charity rebuilds bikes for disadvantaged children, and also seeks out venues where they can participate in some healthy sport. “Every year the bike drive raises between 150 and 250 bikes for the charity, which is the bread and butter of their shop,” Aguilar says. “We also conduct a raf le that raises around $3,000 for them, and make sure they have a strong presence on all of the PR and marketing we do up until the event.” Success in a Can While bikes and beer are the perfect pairing for CANFEST, a successful understanding between venue and organizer tends to be the perfect pairing in the meeting industry, with communication at the core of their relationship. “Leading up to the event, even four or ive months out, we spoke to the Peppermill every day,” Aguilar says. “We had meetings two or three times a month and did walk-throughs together. They dedicated themselves fully in making sure that the event would be great—you can’t ask for more than they gave.”
PAT FLYNN MPI At-Large Member
“WHAT I LEARNED” With CANFEST, I learned that by working together with a good cause you can really make a difference in improving people’s lives and benefit the community in general.
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Why Wait Until Saturday? Small Businesses Seek Black Friday Buzz November 13, 2013
Predictions for Black Friday and 2013 holiday sales range from tentative to lackluster, thanks partly to a drop in consumer confidence following the government shutdown. But one thing is certain – major retailers aren’t taking chances. That means stores opening at 8 p.m. on Thanksgiving, holiday ads before Halloween and aggressive layaway programs and discounts through Cyber Monday. With Black Friday turning into Black Weekend, there’s some fear that Small Business Saturday – a nationwide campaign launched by American Express in 2010 – may get lost in the blitz, along with the small businesses that can’t afford to slash prices. But there’s a unique opportunity for small businesses, according to Ronald C. Goodstein, Associate Professor of Marketing at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, who specializes in retail and consumer behavior. “With consumer confidence down this year, people will give fewer gifts but more meaningful ones,” he said. “The competitive advantage for small businesses is the ability to provide personalized service. They can help customers pick that thoughtful, relevant gift in a way that Macy’s, Walmart or Target can’t.” The best way for small businesses to win customers, he adds, is to join forces. Thinking little and local Power in unity is what drove Betsy Cross and Will Cervarich to launch Little Boxes, a two-day postThanksgiving shopping event in Portland, Ore., that rewards consumers who shop the city's local retailers. Little Boxes was born in 2011, after Cross saw a Black Friday ad for a big-box store opening on Thanksgiving night. “It struck me that you never think about small shops on Black Friday. I thought, ‘There has to be a way we can band together and be more powerful,’” said Cross, who co-owns the Portland boutique betsy & iya with Cervarich, her husband. Related: How Online Retailers Can Make More Money by Next Week The campaign now unites over 170 businesses, which offer discounts and raffle prizes to customers. It’s also boosted bottom lines, with some store owners reporting as much of a 50% increase in Black Friday sales since joining Little Boxes. Cervarich adds that the goal isn’t to compete with Black Friday or Small Business Saturday, but rather harness existing buzz. “There's no question that AmEx’s Small Business Saturday has helped focus the spotlight on small businesses. But one of the reasons we started Little Boxes was because it didn't seem right that shopping locally should come only after you've shopped big boxes.” There are a number of similar initiatives brewing nationwide, including Seattle’s Gift Local Pledge and Dallas/Ft. Worth’s Spend and Win campaign. But even smaller communities are getting big benefits from building their own shop-local holiday campaigns.
The city and Chamber of Commerce in Fallon, Nev., created the Live Local Fallon campaign this summer to encourage residents to spend locally, rather than driving to nearby Reno. They’ve recruited 155 businesses to participate in a campaign where shoppers get stamps in a “passport” that makes them eligible for raffle prizes for every $15 spent. There’s a special push around Black Friday, during which incentives for shoppers will be tripled. “We’ve been very concerned about the leakage of dollars getting spent outside Fallon,” said Rick Gray, executive director of the Fallon Convention and Tourism Authority. “We tried educational campaigns and ads. But until we came up with this tangible way to reward residents, we didn't feel the message was hitting home.” Related: Disturbing Crime Trends Facing Retailers (Infographic) But other non-retail small businesses prefer to avoid one of the busiest shopping days of the year. Visit Myrtle Beach is launching Travel Saturday this year. For 24 hours after Black Friday, giftgivers and deal-seekers can book discounted travel, lodging and entertainment for 2014 at participating small businesses in the South Carolina beach community. The idea is to spotlight a travel-centric economy on a day when consumers are likely to be at home, online and less occupied with retail deals. According to Goodstein, this is the kind of creative thinking and unity that small businesses need to compete. “Black Friday used to delight consumers and offer real deals. Now big companies buy in order to sell at sale price. They compete on lower margins, which means less quality,” he said. “Small businesses need to work together to lower prices [but keep quality high]. Offer consumers service and something special in a tough economy at a discounted price – you can’t beat that
Hashtags Breathe Life Back Into Social Commerce Already Showing Promise as the Actual Mechanism of Payment By: Kevin Bobowski Published: November 13, 2013
Social commerce ‐‐ the purchasing of products through social media ‐‐ is on the rebound. And that rebound is being aided by an unlikely ally ‐‐ the simple hashtag. Hashtags have migrated to Facebook from their origins on Twitter and are growing in use from Google+ to Tumblr as well. They have particularly benefited from the explosive growth of Instagram, where they makes photos and videos easily categorized and searchable. Now hashtags have an increasing presence in online search, and brands are realizing the hashtag's potential to be a link that unites messages in an increasingly fractured social-media landscape. While social networks will come and go, the hashtag is a tool that allows brands to be identified across any of them; content can then engage the social-media audience on whatever site individuals prefer. Hashtags are also helping brands make the jump from social marketing to social commerce, adding the sought-after viral element to purchasing. When a consumer's social "friends" see when and what their friend purchases, it opens up a powerful viral element to online transactions that can be leveraged with coupons, discounts or offers. Unlike social commerce campaigns that are linked to only Facebook, a hashtag-driven campaign brings in a social audience from any social network, multiplying the number of online consumers a campaign can reach. And a hashtag can be as specific or general as needed, relating to a single product or to an overall brand, depending on the campaign strategy. Gartner research shows that 74% of consumers rely on social networks to guide their purchasing decisions, but that influence is now divided across many social networks. Hashtags can unite and bolster that influence, while keeping campaigns simple and user-friendly. Given that social commerce is a $14.25 billion industry, the implications are huge.
The hashtag also has shown promise as the actual mechanism of payment in social commerce. Both Chirpify and an American Express partnership with Twitter are creating ways for social users to purchase items with a hashtag. Chirpify has a name for this tweet-to-purchase symbol -- the actiontag. In both examples, social media users tweet or post a unique hashtag that triggers an online purchase through a connection to a pre-determined online account or credit card. After a simple confirmation, the transaction is complete. Hashtags are also crossing over to sites like Polyvore and Wanelo -- social shopping sites that have harnessed the look and feel of social media for the sole purpose of online shopping. Wanelo and Polyvore use the hashtag for internal search functions of their online inventory of merchandise, allowing site users to discover collections and see new styles by searching for a hashtag under which all the items are organized. Co-buying website Buyapowa.com allows users to request that an item be offered on the website by tweeting #buyapowarequest. ModCloth is using hashtags to allow social media users to compete todesign the brand's new styles — giving engagement a whole new meaning that transcends the social realm. By requiring that aspiring ModCloth designers tag each entry with "#modcloth" and "#wedding," the brand has used the contest to drive branded hashtag traffic right into the Pinterest feeds of socialmedia users actively planning wedding purchases. Adding in offerings of coupon codes in exchange for hashtag participation helps a brand's deals and discounts go viral across social channels. The connection of the hashtag to social commerce is still in its infancy. We'll see that connection grow stronger as brands use the symbol more effectively, and in more innovative ways. The thing we don't know is where the symbol ultimately will take us.
Offerpop Launches Facebook Poll App for Brands Offerpop Launches Facebook Poll App for Brands "Like to Vote" Feature Takes Advantage of FacebPook's New Promotion Guidelines NEW YORK, N.Y., Oct. 9, 2013 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- via PRWEB - Offerpop, the most widely used social marketing platform, today announced the release of its Poll app, the latest in Offerpop's suite of social marketing campaign apps. Poll allows marketers to launch mobile-ready Poll campaigns on Facebook that engage consumers, amplify word-of-mouth, and capture rich data about their fans to inform their cross-channel marketing campaigns. Fans can participate in Polls by liking their selection – a feature that takes advantage of Facebook's recent change to their promotion guidelines. When Facebook users Like their selections, they create news feed stories in their timelines and their friends' news feeds, with a link back to the campaign, driving campaign virality. Brands can promote Polls anywhere – website, digital ads, in stores, and TV – extending the reach of traditional advertising programs. "The Poll app is part of Offerpop's mission to leverage Facebook's newest guidelines and features, enabling brands to run results-driven social campaigns," said Prakash Mishra, CTO and co-founder of Offerpop. "The Poll app helps marketers improve the reach of their campaigns by creating viral stories, resulting in bigger social and email audiences." Marketers can set up a Poll in minutes using Offerpop's one-page campaign builder. They can enable options like fan-gating with a single click, so that participants must like the page to vote. Brands can also add custom forms to capture valuable data about campaign participants after they make their selections, like email addresses and opt-ins for future communications. Fans can also opt to comment after they've made their selections, driving even more participation.
"Polling our customers via Offerpop's platform helps grow word of mouth, build engagement, and impact downstream metrics," said Erica Young, Ecommerce Marketing Manager at Ashley Stewart. "We're excited about the ability of like-based voting to drive campaign virality." As soon as brands publish a campaign, Poll launches a real-time report and begins tracking program metrics such as unique visitors and fan growth. Users can export user data into Excel with just one click. Plus, polling fan bases helps brands crowdsource marketing and product decisions and get valuable user data about their audience's opinions and interests. About Offerpop Offerpop is a powerful, easy-to-use social marketing platform. Marketers across the globe use Offerpop to run social marketing campaigns across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, mobile devices and websites, and access rich data about their fans and consumers. From small businesses to marketing agencies to top brands like Amazon, Unilever, and Viacom, companies use Offerpop to grow their audiences, generate word of mouth, and grow their businesses. Offerpop is a Facebook Preferred Marketing Developer, qualified by the PMD program in Apps. Offerpop is a Twitter Certified Product. Learn more at http://www.offerpop.com. This article was originally distributed on PRWeb. For the original version including any supplementary images or video, visit http://www.prweb.com/releases/2013/10/prweb11212011.htm CONTACT: The Abbi Agency Krystal Tingle krystal@theabbiagency.com +1 (775) 323-2977
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This is the season when the lawn mowers begin roaring, the mulch is spread and homeowners, if they haven't already, begin thinking about getting that roof fixed or finally putting up a privacy fence. But it isn't just the sun that comes out. There are also the pests—the ticks, the mosquitoes and the con artists. As plenty of homeowners are aware, there are ample anecdotes in the media of home-contractor scams. These often con the elderly into either giving up money for no work done, or having work done but at an exorbitant price that wasn't agreed to. In the last few weeks alone, a 77-year-old man in the Philadelphia area paid for his roof to be repaired only to end up paying to have a useless, tar-like substance splattered across it; in Norfolk, Va., an 83-year-old woman gave a home contractor $4,300 and never saw him again; in San Diego, a con artist has been offering to fix driveways, collecting down payments as high as $2,500 and giving nothing in return. The anecdotes go on and on. So what should you do if you want a project completed but don't want to see your name in the local paper, where you're quoted warning your neighbors not to fall for a scam? Research your contractor. Everyone thinks they're doing that, but it isn't as straightforward as one might think to vet a home contractor. "In many cases, we see a person posing as a licensed or reputable contractor, and all checks out until the first payment is made to begin the job, and then the subject disappears. We see fake business cards and websites being used, and criminals can assume the identity of a real contractor, register a company or
use an alias. The goal is always the first payment," says Tom Burnett, a spokesman for Wymoo International, a worldwide detective agency headquartered in Jacksonville, Fla. Burnett is also a former private eye. Despite all the tricks a con artist can play, you can vet a contractor, says Burnett. Obviously, there's the tried-and-true method of using a contractor that a friend or family member swears by, but if you don't have that avenue, Burnett suggests: • Contact the Better Business Bureau where the company or contractor operates and check for complaints. • Ask for references and make sure you actually contact, say, two of them. • Check to see if the company is registered with its state or your state's division of corporations. • You can ask for the contractor's license number to verify with your state's Department of Professional Regulation, or your contractor's state license board or similar office. • And, of course, search the Internet for whatever you can find on the company. Be wary of paying upfront. This is tricky, too, because even honest home contractors ask for money upfront, for good reasons. "Let's say you want your front door put in, and if the contractor makes the order, and you back out, they essentially own that front door," says Amy Matthews, a home contractor who has hosted numerous DIY Network and HGTV series and is a spokesperson for Home Advisor, an online portal that matches, for free, homeowners with licensed home contractors (homeadvisor.com). So it isn't weird for a home contractor to ask for money upfront, but it shouldn't be astronomical numbers, says Matthews. "It's very common for home contractors to ask for a percentage, say, 30 percent at the start, 30 percent in the middle and the rest at the end, and you should never pay at the completion until you've really looked it over." She adds that every state is different, and that in California, home contractors aren't allowed to ask for more than 10 percent of the job upfront. Meanwhile, some states have no regulations regarding home contracting projects. It is also wise to pay a home contractor with a credit card instead of forking over a wad of cash or paying with a check. This will give you a record of the payment for the authorities and improve the odds of getting your money back if you are swindled, since credit card companies may refund your money in such situations. If the proposal isn't very detailed, that might be a red flag. A home contractor who plans on putting a fence around your yard or fixing your roof isn't likely to offer up lengthy, detailed plans, but if you want to hire a contractor for a fairly elaborate project, such as a room addition, you'll want to see some detailed blueprints. "The less gray areas there are, the better off homeowners will be," says Nicholas Iarocci, who owns a home contracting company, Source Development, Inc, which services the New York City area. He says detailed plans can "make the homeowner aware of possible additional expenses," which can help you if the contractor is ethical and if the contractor isn't. After all, some unethical contractors deliver when it comes to work, but they overcharge. Or they might not plan to destroy your finances but do because of the shoddy way they run their business. "If an insured contractor brings a day laborer or an employee that's not on the books, and they get injured, the property owner is directly affected," says Iarocci. "I collect certificates of insurance from my subcontractors."
Don't let yourself be rushed into a project. Some perfectly honest home contractors will come to your house unsolicited, says Matthews. "They're called storm chasers," she says, "and there are some very credible contracting companies that look for homes that have been hit after a windstorm or heavy rain, but you still have to do that background check to make sure." So if the contractor can't wait for you to think about their offer, or for you to summon your inner Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew and check them out, stay away. And you should always keep an eye out for that classic red flag waving in the warm, friendly breeze. Sadly, just as there is no free lunch, there is also rarely an extremely cheap lunch. Says Matthews: "If someone offers to do a really quick job on your house for a really low price, and it sounds too sound to be true, it probably is."
FOX Business 12/5/2012
James Kosta, 3G Studios: A Wild Ride For Jailed Teen Hacker Turned Video Game Entrepreneur Posted: 07/23/2012 2:48 pm Updated: 07/23/2012 3:26 pm
James Kosta woke up at 5 a.m. to the sound of someone pounding on his door. Groggy and naked, he opened the door and was tackled by members of an FBI tactical team, armed with MP5 submachine guns, who started securing all his computers. Kosta was 14 years old. Kosta's life has often played out like some surreal video game. At 13 years old, he emancipated himself from his parents, only to be busted by the feds one year later for illegal hacking. After his release, Kosta worked for the CIA, and by 24, he was a tech entrepreneur making millions. Today, Kosta, 37, runs 3G Studios Inc., a video game business that's set to pull in $10.5 million in revenue this year. But startup success wasn't what Kosta expected for himself as a teenager facing 45 years of jail time for 45 counts of technical burglary, including hacking into the systems of major banks, GE and IBM. When a judge gave him a break, Kosta seized the opportunity to turn his life around. HuffPost Small Business found out how Kosta's intense reality eventually led to virtual success. Why did you seek emancipation from your parents?
I was making money from consulting work, so I approached the school with the idea of formalizing the high school computer club I had started into a business. By my 13th birthday, I was earning about $1,500 a month ... and spending money with friends, coming home late, skipping school. When I had an 18-year-old girlfriend, my parents said if I lived under their roof, I'd have to concentrate on school, give up my girlfriend and shut down my business. I went to court and proved to a judge I was responsible enough to be on my own. How did you turn your computer skills to hacking? I fell in with a bad crowd focused on what networks we could get into, both military and commercial. Just like gangs and the mob have initiations, if you want to be part of the most highprofile, advanced hacking groups, you have to cut your teeth. It was nothing destructive. A lot of it was for bragging rights, to say you pulled something off. You might have been a global hacker when you were arrested, but you were still a kid. Were you scared? I was terrified. When you're that young, because your parents always give you warnings, you expect someone to say, hey, knock it off. I never expected any action like that. Also, what came to light very quickly was that I wasn't technically a kid. When you're emancipated, they have the right to charge you as an adult. How were you able to get out of the 45-year sentence? After being in for almost a year, the judge agreed to suspend my sentence if I didn't commit another crime and I agreed to join the military when I was eligible. I think what he saw was an intelligent kid who needed discipline. For me, it was a no-brainer. I knew if I went to maximum security for youth, a guy like me probably woudn't have a good experience. In between, they stuck me in a boys camp in Santa Barbara. We were on the second line of fighting forest fires. To see those firefighters in action and have them respect me meant a lot, and shaped me as a man. That's when I first realized I could be helpful to people instead of being nefarious. At 18, you started serving in the Navy. How did you end up in the analyst division of the CIA by age 20? I was working on a Naval Intelligence project that got transferred to the CIA. I was responsible for tracking the money going to various warlords and radical sheiks in North Africa and the Middle East. Then I was doing penetration testing on military installations, working with IT groups to see if I could steal data from outside. It was the beginning preparation for technological warfare. How did you transition from the military to making millions?
I got recruited as a Microsoft contractor straight out of CIA. I was consulting with multiple companies, then my brother and I started one of the first commercial websites focused on financial markets. In 1999, we sold our dotcoms for tens of millions of dollars. After 9/11, how did you start working for the CIA again? I offered to simulate Las Vegas getting hit with a dirty bomb and how rescuers could lock down the city. We were using a game engine by the company that did Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon, where we dropped these bad guys into Las Vegas and started [pursuing] them. We thought that was more fun than the simulation business, and our heart was aching to move toward commercial video game development, so we steered the company in that direction. Your reality has been so intense, what drew you to virtual world? I fell in love with the concept of interactive entertainment, allowing people to make their own story. The analyst side of me loves that it's like watching ants from above. You get to see how people are experiencing a story, reacting to stimuli you put in place. In intelligence, looking at human patterns, I was fascinated by social hacking, using a person's belief systems to get what you want. The real question with video games is that suspension of disbelief -- can I fool an audience that thinks they're in control when they're really not? Do you see any way the story of your own life has come full circle? I was an intelligent, rebellious youth, but my grades and attendance records weren't the sole indicators for my potential contribution to society. Ultimately, society suffers when we're that myopic. When you look a little deeper, as people did with me, you're able to get kids focused on their potential. A huge part of my company is focusing on teen mentoring for troubled youth. That's something I owe to the people who helped me. Entrepreneur Spotlight Name: James Kosta Company: 3G Studios Inc. Age: 37 Location: Reno, Nev. Founded: 2006 Employees: 47 2012 Projected Revenue: $10.5 million Website: http://www.3gstudios.com/pages/home/
GM IPO Soaring, But GM as an Investment? Blech. - Deal Journal - WSJ
http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2010/11/18/gm-ipo-soaring-but-gm-as-an-inve...
NOVEMBER 18, 2010, 12:26 PM ET
General Motors clearly isn’t having a tough time finding buyers — when it comes to its stock. Shares are up about 7% on its first trading day as a refurbished public company, and that’s after the offering was increased and the price raised. But not everyone is enthusiastic. Earlier, I wrote skeptically about the initial public offering in this Writing on the Wall column, and reached out to potential investors. Almost all contacted were less-than floored with the prospect of owning G.M.
Associated Press
Evan Kirkpatrick, a financial adviser in Seattle, said he’s not surprised with the early gains GM has made in the market today, but “with the government remaining a significant shareholder after the IPO, the uncertainty risk exceeds the potential gain for our clients,” he said. “I wouldn’t be surprised to see the hype surrounding the offering lead to high volume and potentially rapid gains, but we prefer more predictable”
investments. Perhaps not surprisingly, advisers in Michigan were less skeptical. David Aquilina, an adviser in Troy, Mich., said GM is really a “new company” and that there will be “tremendous drive to get it right” but cautions all bets are off if we get a double-dip recession. “The GM IPO is a long term hold, and that they will be an owner along with the U.S. government,” Aquilina said. “UAW and CAW, each with a vested interest in seeing the company do well.” Robert Barone, who heads Ancora West Advisors in Reno, Nevada, said much of GM’s problems have to do with a customer base “loaded” with debt. “GM is facing a saturated car market in an industry with loads of capacity,” Barone said. “There is a reasonable probability that they will still have trouble competing due to the high fixed costs involved in U.S. production. “Unless GM can reinvent itself, and become a low-cost manufacturer of quality vehicles at competitive prices, the IPO will more than likely turn out to be a poor investment over the next decade.” Bill Smead, manager of the Smead Value Fund, sees GM at the mercy of a bigger macroeconomic picture, one that doesn’t favor the remade car company. “Along with emerging markets and commodities, these cyclical companies show you it’s late in the party,” Smead said “In my time in the investment business, I have never seen such a ridiculous premium put on this kind of additional risk.”
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GM IPO Soaring, But GM as an Investment? Blech. - Deal Journal - WSJ
http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2010/11/18/gm-ipo-soaring-but-gm-as-an-inve...
And even retail investors were cool to the offering. Becky Sturm, who owns a beauty shop in St. Paul, Minn., said she doesn’t want any part of “bailed out” companies and this extends to the products they buy as well. “I have purchased GM cars and trucks my entire life, but being a small business owner and witnessing the behavior during and the mismanagement of the companies that were bailed out by our government, I will never purchase or recommend another GM car in my lifetime.” Like Sturm, Elizabeth Cohee, an attorney in Oakland, Calif., isn’t recommending the products or the stock. “GM has shown that they believe themselves to be immune from adherence to the standard practices that provide even a modicum of protection to the average investor,” Cohee said. “A certain amount of trust is required when a company asks investors to finance their operations; GM has demonstrated that they are not worthy of that trust.”
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HELPING HANDS Up to 100 million active landmines are currently spread across dozens of countries, according to the United Nations. The mines may be old and in countries no longer at war, but they injure or kill every 20 minutes. Numerous groups are dedicated to removing these mines, but when some of the safest and most cost-effective removal techniques involve training giant pouched rats to sniff out explosive devices there’s no quick fix—and no immediate end to the threat. Although 60 percent of mine victims survive, the majority suffer at
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least one amputation—adding up to 50,000 total lost hands. Lost hands lead to increased social and economic suffering, and functional replacements are costly. But look beyond landmines: There are hundreds of thousands of children in developing countries in need of hands due to injuries sustained from conflicts, diseases and birth defects. The LN-4 Prosthetic Hand Project began with engineer and inventor Ernie Meadows seeking a way to help children and honor his deceased daughter. The result of his efforts is a functional, $50, gripping prosthetic
originally designed for children. Although the device isn’t visually a perfect hand replica, it works and its implementation is non-invasive (no surgery required). Established to manage the device’s global dissemination, the non-profit Ellen Meadows Prosthetic Hand Foundation has developed relationships with groups such as Rotary International through which the LN-4 is being distributed at no cost to recipients. Chico, Calif.-based Odyssey Teams, experienced with team-building Continued on page 22
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programs that give back to the community and those in need, has recognized the devastation caused by hand amputations worldwide and now uses its position to help ease the pain. Odyssey is the Ellen Meadows Prosthetic Hand Foundation’s exclusive LN-4 corporate training program partner. Organizations seeking meaningful corporate social responsibility projects can work with Odyssey’s Helping Hands program and assemble LN-4 units as part of cooperative problemsolving exercises. Once the devices are built (and inspected to ensure proper construction) they’re distributed to children in need. According to Odyssey co-founder and chief operating officer Lain Hensley, the first groups to participate in Helping Hands have been on the small side—up to 120 attendees. He
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recipients. One extension to the program that Odyssey is offering as a priority perk sends select Helping Hands partici-
Odyssey President Bill John said in a blog announcing the new program. “We’ll help you develop skills that go beyond the traditional definitions to authentic internal experiences of what it means to be successful.” And thus, Helping Hands works full circle: Organizations exert their energies in an innovative CSR project, injured children gain a usable body extension and team-building participants experience a taste of the selfless giving from which the LN-4 was born— at the very least a salve for the ageless human “what am I doing with my life?” existential crisis. The Helping Hands team-building experience won’t answer life’s questions so much as empower participants with the knowledge that, despite anything else they will ever do, they have affected positive, meaningful change somewhere in the world. To call it a “win, win, win” situation is overly simplistic—
HELPING HANDS WILL SHOW YOUR TEAM HOW TO STEP OUTSIDE PERCEIVED LIMITATIONS TO THE PLACE OF POSSIBILITY has since discussed the program with planners for groups of up to 10,000. The Helping Hands program doesn’t end with LN-4 assembly, it goes beyond simple faith that the devices are being put to good use. Hensley says that corporate team-building groups actually get to see the benefits of their work with follow-up photos of their hand
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pants along with Rotary International to fit the devices on the recipients, wherever they may be: Cambodia, Colombia, Vietnam or any of the other dozens of locations that stand to benefit from LN-4s. “Helping Hands will show your team how to step outside perceived limitations to the place of possibility,”
everyone benefits. To call it just “CSR” is weak—the result enhances and saves lives. The collaboration involved here is a testament to the power and benevolence of the human spirit. —Michael Pinchera