Vision Graphics Inc/Eagle:xm Connect Magazine Jan./Feb. 2016

Vision Graphics Inc. ENGAGING MARKETING MINDS

VOL. 6, ISSUE 1,JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2016

PARADIGM SHIFT Competing in the new age of jobs

INSIDE

INBOX

TRENDING WITH JAMES POOLEY

EYE ON (REAL) CONTENT

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Up Front Publisher’s Letter

GREAT THINGS

W

ith a new year comes new pressures – goals to set, goals to reach, and relationships to start and grow.

But with a new year also comes new possibilities, a blank slate of sorts, to dig deeper and connect with your market in a new way.

However, often times we let the pressures overshadow the possibilities. The sales goals make us lax on the current relationships we have, or the budget acts as a limitation, rather than an opportunity for innovation. But growth comes by running through a wall – motivating yourself to achieve despite the restrictions.

We are able to accomplish great things when we don’t succumb to our limitations. Take Beethoven, who composed some of his greatest pieces while deaf, or Stephen Hawking, who even DON’T LET YOUR though bound to a wheelLIMITATIONS chair and only able to speak KEEP YOU FROM through a computer, has beHAVING A VAST come one of the world’s most IMPACT. renowned astrophysicists. As Hawking said, “People are fascinated by the contrast between my very limited physical powers and the vast nature of the universe I deal with.”

Don’t let your limitations keep you from having a vast impact.

Don’t let your marketing budget keep you from pursuing deep connections. This year, despite the restrictions you may face, make

your best contribution to your business and your clients. You may find yourself setting more records than ever before.

That said, we’re thrilled to bring you the first issue of 2016. The cover feature, “Paradigm Shift, Competing in the New Age of Jobs,” explores the underlying motivators that make us want to work. It also highlights how the workplace is changing with the influx of the Millennial generation.

In the second feature, experts weigh in on how they made their business – and their brand – stand out above the noise.

For the new year, we’re bringing you a new look and some exciting things to come.

As always, it’s a privilege and a pleasure to serve your community, and we’re thrilled to have you with us for 2016.

Happy New Year!

MARK STEPUTIS Publisher

In This Issue

PUBLISHER Mark Steputis mark.steputis@visiongraphics-inc.com MANAGING EDITOR Tyson Polzkill

tyson.polzkill@eaglexm.com

ART DIRECTION Jeremy Moyler EDITORIAL & CREATIVE DIRECTION

Conduit Inc. www.Conduit-Inc.com Connect is published bimonthly. Copyright 2016. All rights reserved.

For more information, contact Scott Nordstrom at Scott.Nordstrom@visiongraphics-inc.com

03 Publisher’s Letter Great Things 04 The Inbox

06 Paradigm Shift Competing in the new age of jobs

By Charles Lunan 10 Stand 4

The key to standing out By Michael J. Pallerino 14 Trending with...

Data expert James Pooley 15 Eye on (real) content Survey delves into what marketers understand about content

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News | Updates | Statistics

The most strategic marketers will revisit their content, targeting and media strategies, and challenge themselves to offer more relevant and rewarding audience experiences; in other words, they will focus on earning their audience.”

INSIGHTS

The Inbox

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– ThinkVine CEO Damon Ragusa on the importance of marketers finding effective new methods for reaching their consumers

1.4 The number, in billions, of consumers who are expected to utilize a mobile messaging application by 2018, according to eMarketer’s “Mobile Messaging Apps: Global User Forecast, Leaderboard and Outlook on Monetization” report. That’s more than 80 percent of all smartphone users. As more consumers gain mobile internet access worldwide and flock to messaging apps as cheaper alternatives to SMS, MMS and voice calls, the numbers are expected to post double-digit growth over the next couple of years, the study reports.

T

Book Rec

Disrupt Yourself: Putting the Power of Disruptive Innovation to Work

By Whitney Johnson

his we know: Disruptive companies see a need, an empty space waiting to be filled and dare to create something for which a market may not yet exist.

Perhaps nobody knows the frameworks of disruptive innovation better than Whitney Johnson, co-founder and former president of Rose Park Advisors’ Disruptive Innovation Fund. While there, she used the theory to

invest in publicly traded stocks and private earlystage companies.

In Disrupt Yourself, Johnson shows us the frameworks of disruption and how you can apply them to your particular path – a self-starter ready to make a disruptive pivot in your business; a high-potential individual charting your career trajectory; a manager looking to instill innovative thinking within your team; and a leader facing industry changes that make for an uncertain future.

If you want to be successful in unexpected ways and follow your own disruptive path, Disrupt Yourself may be the tool you need to get going.

19%

HAVE TRANSPARENT PRICES AND PRODUCT DETAILS

16%

TRACK PURCHASING HABITS ACROSS DIFFERENT CHANNELS TO GIVE PERSONALIZED RECOMMENDATIONS

Deja vu

13%

HAVE BROADEST SELECTION OF PRODUCTS OR SERVICES

B

12%

HAVE CONSISTENTLY LOWER PRICES

10%

OFFER MULTIPLE PAYMENT OPTIONS

SURVEY SHOWS WHAT MAKES BUYERS BUY AGAIN uyer demands continue to change for B2B buyers. Today’s buyers expect a consistent and personalized experience in every stage of their purchasing journey. So what makes them come to you again? According to the “Mastering Omni-Channel B2B Customer Engagement” report

by Accenture and SAP Hybris, B2B buyers prefer transparency above all else. The study, which surveyed more than 1,300 business decision-makers around the world, sought some of the most important factors influencing the decision to buy again from a supplier. The top five responses included:

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Organizations must shift from creating an environment where they assume that people need to work there to one where people want to work there.”

– JACOB MORGAN, CO-FOUNDER, THE FUTURE OF WORK COMMUNITY

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PARA DIGM cross America – and particularly among technology and creative types – the grumbling is getting louder.

A

“They are not using me to my full potential.”

“I’m not growing.”

“I don’t have access to the tools I need to excel.”

“I’m not getting the mentoring I expected.”

“I don’t see any opportunities for advancement.”

“I’ve been here just 18 months and I’ve already outgrown this job.”

Before you dismiss such remarks as the whining of a spoiled generation, consider that Millennials – or those born between the late 1970s and late 1990s – now make up the largest group of people in the United States and much of the global workforce. They will make up half the U.S. workforce by 2020 and 75 percent by 2025, as Baby Boomer retirements accelerate.

Consider also that decades of research by both academics and consultants demonstrate a direct correlation between employee engagement and financial performance. Aon Hewitt boasts that, on average, companies certified as “Best Employers,” earn operating profits that are 4 percent higher; sales growth that is 6 percent higher; and employee turnover rates that are 33 percent lower than their non-certified peers.

Make no mistake. Winning the hearts and minds of Millennials will be critical to winning the talent war in the coming decade, and that will require countless companies and managers to make big changes in how they manage and motivate the workforce.

Competing in the new age of jobs ★★★

BY CHARLES LUNAN

SHIFT JANUARY FEBRUARY 2016

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In its 2015 Trends in Global Employee Engagement report, Aon Hewitt found employee engagement levels plateaued in 2014 and that employees’ overall work experience was deteriorating. In October 2015, Gallup reported that the percentage of U.S. workers it considers engaged in their jobs averaged just 32.1 percent, essentially unchanged since March and well below the levels seen before the last recession.

Yet, even as the unemployment rate approaches its lowest level in 7.5 years, many employers remain oblivious to the forces driving the griping.

WHY CHANGING THE WORKPLACE MATTERS illennials are even hastening the demise of one of corporate America’s most despised institutions – the annual perfor-

“This is a generation of employees with technological fluency that is willing to live at home longer until they find a company that they truly want to work for,” writes Jacob Morgan, who has interviewed dozens of CEOs around the world for his work as an author and co-founder of Future of Work Community, an online resource for talent management practitioners. “In other words, organizations must shift from creating an environment where they assume that people need to work there to one where people want to work there.”

Morgan says the most forward-thinking employers are

mance evaluation. Accenture made waves in July 2015, when it announced it would eliminate its annual review process beginning Sept. 1 after concluding it caused more frustration than results. The global consulting firm is moving toward a system of more frequent and less formal evaluations.

To compete for top programmers, TechSmith participates in a program at nearby Michigan State University that pairs Amazon, General Motors, Ford, Symantec and other employers with teams of computer science

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Millennials value flexibility more than money. Sure, they want all the money they can get, but work is something you do in between weekends.”

investing hundreds of millions of dollars to overhaul their technology, offices and talent management systems in a bid to create

such environments.

“The big shift we are seeing now is that the employees are telling the organization what tools they want to work with, what values they want to promote, what types of places they want to work in,” Morgan says. “I can’t think of a single industry where this is not relevant. It cuts across all careers, whether engineering, marketing or in any creative position.”

In his 2014 book, “The Future of Work,” Morgan lays out how technology, demographics and globalization are reshaping the workplace and the steps employers can take to gain an edge in competing for top talent.

students to develop market ready applications. The program gives it an edge when it comes to hiring interns. TechSmith also keeps its kitchen stocked with food and beverages, has lunch catered every Friday and holds employee recognition events every month.

Heathfield predicts that technology companies based in small markets will have to become much more comfortable hiring remote employees if they are going to compete for top talent.

“One of our challenges in mid-Michigan is that if we

have some candidate in California who loves our company and wants to work for us, there are no other companies he can work for here if the position does not work out,” Heathfield says.

“Our chief technology officer is retiring in 2016, and I absolutely believe the CTO we hire to replace him is going to be remote. That’s a huge jump for my husband, but not so much for our daughter. At her last job, she had teams in six countries and her boss was in London. It’s a different world.”

“

–HR CONSULTANT SUSAN M. HEATHFIELD

STEPS 5 for winning the talent war

Mentor. Career opportunities remain the top driver of employee engagement worldwide, ahead of “Organization Reputation” and “Pay,” according to an annual survey conducted by the global talent management consulting firm Aon Hewitt. Yet a majority of employees do not see a path forward at their organization and the percentage of U.S. employees who were satisfied with career opportunities at their place of work declined 3 points to 44 percent from 2013 to 2014.

01

In the realm of technology, companies are shifting to Cloudbased tools, enabling workers to quickly and inexpensively organize around projects regardless of their location. This is allowing new levels of collaboration and innovation. Yet the gap between the consumer web and enterprise remains large and is creating growing employee frustration at many organizations, Morgan says.

In its most recent report on global employee engagement, Aon Hewitt found increasing employee dissatisfaction with many of the resources they are provided.

“Employees who are engaged, but not empowered, are more likely to be frustrated, burned out and become disengaged,” says Ken Oehler, Ph.d., Aon Hewitt’s global engagement practice leader. “This puts organizations at risk of having suboptimal productivity and higher-than-average employee turnover.”

That has not stopped employees and job candidates from using the connectivity enabled by the web to strengthen their own hand in employment negotiations.

A top employee with high-demand skills who no longer wants to commute three hours a day to and from the office need only start returning emails from recruiters on LinkedIn, for example.

This reality not only helps explain

Winning the hearts and minds of Millennials will be critical to winning the talent war in the coming decade.

the proliferation of “Best Places to Work” lists, but also the eagerness of employers to get on them.

To get on those lists, employers must be prepared to assign new employees to teams and projects that will challenge their skills, provide career counseling, feed them and allow them to telecommute for those occasions when they need to leave the office early or come in late so they can attend a family activity, care for an ailing parent, or attend to some other personal priority.

“Millennials value flexibility more than money,” says Susan M. Heathfield, a consultant who writes about human resource topics on About.com when she’s not helping her husband run TechSmith Corp., a 300employee software company in Okemos, Mich. “Sure, they want all the money they can get, but work is something you do in between weekends.”

02

Provide an annual training stipend. Today, top performers are more self-directed, says Jacob Morgan, co-founder of the Future of Work Community, an online community dedicated to helping companies win the war for talent. This is not because they have a sense of entitlement, but because they have a greater appreciation for how technology can make their skills obsolete, disrupt their careers and dilute the ties between employer and employee. Thankfully, that same technology means employees usually can obtain the training they need online 24/7 and often for free, or at a much lower cost than just 10 years ago. Consider offering an annual training stipend employees can spend as they see fit.

03

Move to the Cloud. One immediate way to enable ownership is to move company tools to the cloud where employees can access them from any device, at any time without costly provisioning by your IT department. This provides employees with tremendous flexibility as they seek to balance work, family, friends, hobbies and health.

04

Make the workplace more social. Create a fun, physical workplace where people will want to come to work. This may include providing rooms with sofas and coffee tables, free food and beverages, a more open floor plan and small meeting rooms to encourage collaboration.

05

Provide a greater purpose. Six of 10 Millennials surveyed by Deloitte in 2014 said a “sense of purpose” was part of the reason they chose to work for their current employers. That number rose to 77 percent among high users of social networking tools compared to just 46 percent of those who are the “least connected.”

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STAND The key to standing out By Michael J. Pallerino

Strategy is about making choices, trade-offs; it’s about deliberately choosing to be different.”

“

n his book, “The Old School with New Tools,” Tim Brown talks about what’s needed to create exceptional sales experiences for your clients.

The strategy he endorses, which was crafted through 20-plus years of developing and implementing powerful sales engines, fuses the synergies of old school techniques with today’s ever-changing technologies.

In the high-pressure world of leading sales efforts for entrepreneurial ventures, of which Tim has spent the majority of his career doing, finding ways to stand out from the competition can be the difference between getting the job done and exceeding beyond expectations.

Over a 10-year span, Tim worked with both established and

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– MICHAEL PORTER

start-up companies in Denver, Chicago and Sydney, Australia, including the likes of Cisco Systems, Alteon Web Systems (Nortel Networks), American Power Conversion and Xircom. Among his myriad successes was selling $186 million of Cisco Systems equipment to Qwest Communications within a two-year period and growing the revenue of Sign Language, a large-format printing company, from $32,000 to $10.2 million within a five-year period.

Ask him, and he will tell you that his success was rooted in making himself – and his brand – stand out over the people and companies that provided similar products, services and value propositions.

“That is really critical today,” says Tim, who serves as president of Northstar Commercial Partners, along with overseeing Three Creative, a life leadership organization. “How brands were marketed

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30 years ago – or less – is very different in today’s digital and social media world. You no longer need a lot of money to build the essential components of a brand, and then place that brand into the marketplace.”

For example, in just one generation, brand competition has shifted from a local/regional competition to a national/

global scale. The reason: Innovative communications tools and platforms like social media continue to lower the traditional barriers to entry, i.e., it’s easier to create and launch a brand.

The downside: The marketplace is more crowded than ever before.

Separating yourself from all

this noise is a strategy more brands must embrace to win the war of differentiation.

The strategy, he says, really depends on the brand. For example, if your brand is built on risk, be risky and even a bit snarky or sarcastic. If your brand image is built on stability and being conventional, take a more conservative and

traditional approach.

“What’s important is not whether you are risky or not, but ensuring the message you are portraying is in alignment with your company’s overall mission, vision, values and goals, which hopefully is already in alignment with your overall product and brand deployment strategy,” Tim says.

I remind myself every morning: Nothing I say this day will teach me anything. So if I’m going to learn, I must do it by listening.

– Larry King

BRAND Stop, listen, learn–

D

uring an informal study that Three Creative conducted, Tim and his team found that at least 95 percent of the people they surveyed on LinkedIn did not publish content of any kind. A golden opportunity missed. “These employees are seen as experts by prospects and employees,” he says. “It is an ideal way to boost the identity of your brand with just a few simple posts.”

Brand messaging – which will help your brand stand out – must be consistent and relentless.

That means the message must start at the top and trickle down. In any and every company, nearly every person who is directly or indirectly responsible for selling to a prospect or customer has a public facing social media page.

The key is to remember that these – view your brand. Abe Brown, founder personal brand pages are a direct of Momentum Coaching, says one of reflection of your brand and your comthe real keys to standing out above the pany, too. “Be sure to give everybody fray is the connection you make with in your company the resources they your audience. need to post,” Tim says. “Those posts “If you can be the leader in your will be the reflection of your brand. marketplace, you win,” Abe says. “But Remember, if you don’t create matethe ability to win means you must rials that are a positive and aligned cultivate trust with your audience. It’s representative of your brand, your how brands like Apple and Coca-Cola employees will.” continue to be leaders in their spaces.

At the end of the day, consumers have How that plays out depends on how your employees – and your customers the ability to purchase from whomever

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they want. But if your brand builds trust, and you can deliver on the promise and value you promote, you will stand out.”

While listening to what your consumers have to say seems like a simple strategy, too many companies get lost in all the noise that surrounds them. “This is a people-centric, customer-centric landscape today,” Abe says. “If you are able to listen to what your customers, and even your competitors’ customers are saying, you will have the power to be significant, instead of insignificant.”

NOW Strategies you can use

M

arketing experts will tell you that there is no time like the present to kick the identity of your brand and its message into high gear.

You can start by asking yourself a few simple questions, which Tim Brown says is key to getting your message heard. For example: What is your external and internal messaging? How does it align with your corporate mission, vision, values and goals? Be intentional about every word that you use – they all matter.

Are your employees, prospects and customers able to share their stories about their ideas, growth, pains and gains with others within the company? Do you have a “brand board of directors”

You have to learn the rules of the game. And then, you have to play better than anyone else.

– Albert Einstein

consisting of employees, prospects and customers who can help you navigate the creation and evolution of your brand?

Are you remarkable? In Seth Godin’s book, “Purple Cow,” he writes about the difference between a brown and a purple cow.

Give people a reason – or several – to remark about your brand.

“Your reputation is at the heart of the brand of your company,” Tim says. “Whether good or bad, you build a reputation through stories. And if you do not define your stories, others will create those stories for you. Take the approach that if you don’t write anything on social media, nobody will. Brand leaders must lead not only from within, but from without. Don’t wait to react to the competition. Dictate the playing field to your competitors and establish a standard of excellence with your own day-to-day habits, your commitment to authentically serving, and your brand’s pure business ethics.”

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Interview with James Pooley

I

Trending with...

Data expert James Pooley

t’s a social media world – and getting more and more socially active every day.

But in today’s “sharing” culture, James Pooley believes you can never be too safe. Having recently completed a five-year term as deputy director general at the World Intellectual Property Organization in Geneva, Switzerland, Pooley is an expert in the fields of intellectual property, trade secrets and data security.

When it comes to your social media strategies, Pooley, also is author of “Secrets: Managing Information Assets in the Age of Cyberespionage,” believes you must work diligently to protect your company’s sensitive data, proprietary information and trade secrets. Here are his insights on helping protect your brand.

Is it safe to say you can never be too careful when it comes to social media?

Yes. I’m not saying openness is inherently bad, but you have to understand that most of your employees are active on social media. For some, posting on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter is as natural as breathing. But what if they share a photo of a product prototype or accidently message a Dropbox link with confidential information? Social media and the “sharing” culture it has sparked can be real challenges to your organization.

How do you wrap your mind around this?

Acknowledge the risks and work to improve your employees’ knowledge and good judgment. Understand that you’re asking employees to go against their “digital instincts.” By its very nature, social media encourages users to publicly disclose the minutiae of their lives. They casually communicate, swap files, and use the Cloud to store and access everything. They have become experts at revealing a lot using

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only 140 characters. When it comes to your brand, teach them to operate based on a different set of standards that often contradict how they deal with information in their private lives.

HAVE A SAFETY NET OF TRUSTED EMPLOYEES MONITORING AND MAINTAINING YOUR COMPANY’S PRESENCE ON SOCIAL MEDIA TO STOP POTENTIALLY REVEALING POSTS FROM EVER REACHING THE PUBLIC.

Is it hard to get a hold on everything centered on your brand?

You have to be aware of your official social media presence. While you may not be able to fully control what your employees post on their personal social media accounts, you can certainly keep a close eye on official company Twitter, Facebook and other social media pages. Have a safety net of trusted employees monitoring and maintaining your company’s presence on social media to stop potentially revealing posts from ever reaching the public. Also, regularly change passwords to lock out account hackers.

Where’s the best place to start?

Put it in writing. Don’t assume that a few informal warnings or cautionary tales will keep all of your employees from tweeting and posting what they shouldn’t. If your company already has general policies about the disclosure of information assets, make them part of the official set of rules that govern employees’ use of social media. These policies will reinforce the need to keep personal and work issues separated, and not to post about what is going on inside the company.

In the end, does it all come down to education?

Yes. You must train, train, and then train some more. You can mitigate much of the risks by creating a quality-training program that engages your employees as part of your security team. They’ll make fewer mistakes themselves on social media (and elsewhere), and they’ll also watch out for the mistakes of others. Keep in mind that the best training is continuous, careful, upbeat and professional, and does not rely on threats. Be sure to include everyone – not just key knowledge workers.

That includes contractors, temporary employees and interns.

Before You Go

EYE ON (REAL) CONTENT SURVEY DELVES INTO WHAT MARKETERS UNDERSTAND ABOUT CONTENT

W

hile everybody talks about the importance of content marketing, many marketers still are trying to grasp what effective content looks like. Interestingly, according to the “B2B Content Marketing 2016: Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends – North America” report, 55 percent still don’t know. The report, conducted by the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs, and sponsored by Brightcove, surveyed 1,521 North American B2B marketers.

HERE’S A LOOK AT WHAT THEY SAY ARE THEIR LEADING PRIORITIES IN 2016:

72% CREATE MORE ENGAGING CONTENT 65% GET A BETTER GRASP ON EFFECTIVE AND NON-EFFECTIVE CONTENT 57% FIND MORE/BETTER WAYS TO REPURPOSE CONTENT 51% BECOME BETTER STORYTELLERS 41% GET BETTER AT UNDERSTANDING OF AUDIENCE JANUARY FEBRUARY 2016

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