Where Will You Focus in 2018?

Halloween isn't even here yet, but I've been thinking recently about what I want out of my professional world in 2018. Not so much from a "New Year's Resolutions for the Marketing Set" point of view but more about how I can better steer my agency in the coming year. I have been fortunate in the last several years to work with some fantastic B2B, B2C and nonprofit organizations. From each of them, I have drawn an ever-sharper sense of what Message & Medium does best, what types of people and companies we can help most, and what markets and industries are genuinely engaging and in which we'd like to work more in the future. 

We've always worked best with nimble organizations in which senior management is actively involved in the marketing and communications realms.  This has been true since the day the agency was founded (and in the days of its predecessor, Nahil Communication Group). We also work best with creative people and people who don't necessarily come to us with an intransigent and preconceived idea of the marketing fix that they need.  Message & Medium can do its best for clients with a clean sheet approach. Tell us your business problems at a high level and, together, we'll sort out how marketing and communications can address those and create a plan and program that does so. 

Message & Medium is especially adept at messaging and positioning. The agency does best when it can help clients craft a story that is compelling and credible. Audience identification is a big part of this, too. It is as critically important to know who you need to address as it is to know what you want to tell them. This foundation work makes the creation of a plan, supporting programs and the content to drive them a far more targeted activity. Organizations who are willing to open up their messaging to us are perfect clients for Message & Medium and we've found that startups, high-growth companies or companies in transition/evolution are our best partners.

Our heritage is in the technology world but, increasingly, that means less and less as technology becomes thoroughly ingrained in every facet of human life.  Instead, we look for clients that may be technology-enabled but that can demonstrate some type of real impact in a market or industry. This can be as simple as a firm using chatbots to genuinely improve something as simple as sharing a video or delivering a new dimension to customer service in an established industry. Or, it can be a firm using 3D scanning and LIDAR to change the way major construction and engineering projects are done. Fundamentally, because almost everything we encounter today has a technological element, Message & Medium focuses hard on the implications of the technology, not the technology itself.

The upcoming year will provide several opportunities for smart and fast companies to create real impact in fast-evolving markets and industries.  Some of these are legacy industries that are being thoroughly roiled by new technologies and existential challenges like media, music, financial services, transportation, and security of all types. Others are new markets seeing a flood of competitors and little differentiation, like legal cannabis, analytics of all kinds, ubiquitous AI and bots, drones (airborne, undersea and on the road), and the IoT.  As my agency looks over the horizon, these are the areas we'd like to focus on more closely in 2018.

I'm curious as to my readers' 2018 plans. What are going to be your top areas of interest and emphasis in what promises to be another gripping year?  And what, if anything, will change for how you steer your own businesses and careers in the fast-approaching new year?  Please get in touch and let me know.  In the meantime, Happy New Year!

"Finding Signal:" Insight for Startup Founders from a Serial Entreprenuer

Message & Medium client, Burst, is lead by CEO and Founder Bryant McBride.  Bryant is a longtime entrepreneur, investor and executive who was recently asked by Worth magazine to contribute an article on a singular lesson he learned that has been helpful along the founder's journey. Bryant's article on "Finding Signal" is a great lesson for any entrepreneur.

MassTLC unConference 2015 Recap

I was fortunate enough again this year to be asked to provide blog coverage for some sessions at the MassTLC unConference on October 23 at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston. The format was modified a bit from past events -- experimentation is good -- but the unCon still remains one of my favorite industry events of the year.  It is refereshingly bullshit-free and you will NEVER hear a sales pitch from any session facilitators or participants.  The dialogue is always strong and the out-of-session networking is the best.  Take a look at the informative recap posts from the blogging team, post a comment or two and make sure you put this one on your calendar for 2016.   

A Personal Plea: Unite to End Youth Homelessness

I'm a member of the Advisory Board for Y2Y Harvard Square, and I have been just blown away by the passion, commitment and resourcefulness of the young adults who have ushered this project into existence.  The non-profit is called ‘Y2Y Harvard Square” and it operates on a unique peer-to-peer model – basically young adults helping other young adults find a sustainable way out of homelessness and onto a stable and enriching path in life. In the year that I've had the pleasure of serving as mentor to the leadership team and a board member of the organization, my eyes have been opened to the depth of the homelessness problem in the country and its especially painful impact on the young and most vulnerable among us.  The shelter is scheduled to officially open by the end of this year and is in the "last mile" of fund raising to help equip and outfit the facility. We've started an Indiegogo campaign seeking small, individual contributions to raise the last $50,000 we need. I would be eternally grateful if you took a look at the link below and at the organization's Web site and contributed some small amount to help close this final gap and aid the young homeless of our region.

Many thanks,

Chris

"There's Tech Life at the other end of the Redline," says VentureFizz

And they sure are right!  Thanks to the folks at VentureFizz for shining a light on the entrepreneurial scene south of Boston.  

Full text of the VF story here:

Excerpt: "Everyone's familiar with the success of start-ups in Cambridge, and the importance of pathways like the Red Line and Alewife for fueling growth. At the other end of the Red Line is the Braintree/Quincy corridor. Growth in the corridor has long been talked about but now there are signs that tech start-ups are starting to build tech businesses on the South Shore.  

One big sign of how much things have changed in the South Shore for tech companies is at the Quincy Center for Innovation, launched in October 2013, the organization is a start-up center and office space for companies, and helps start-ups grow with advice and contacts. The center now has 44 companies, and the space is just about full, with 92 full time employed people at the companies, representing 16 different industries."
 

Small Business Marketing: How to Identify and Reach Your First Customers

Quincy Chamber of Commerce Small Business Launch: Identify, Reach, Convert Your First Customers from Quincy Center for Innovation

A primer prezo delivered to members of the Quincy Chamber of Commerce for Small Business Launch Week -- in conjunction with Donna Mavromates of MavroCreative.

The 7 Best Influencer Marketing Resources - Traackr

So, I've long been a fan of Traackr and its Influencer Marketing blog and now they've come up with this very handy list of very credible resources for anyone interested in the latest and best thinking on how to communicate with market influencers.  Personally, I use every one of these  on at least a weekly basis and subscribe to most of them to help keep me up to speed on the latest thinking from my marketing colleagues across the country.

Email Marketing - Email Subject Lines That Sell : MarketingProfs Article

Fascinating research (relogged from MarketingProfs).  What words or phrases are most likely to get your email opened?

MassTLC unConference 2014,“Branding in the Age of Fast Failure”

Iconic images though they may be, Nike’s “swoosh” and Apple’s “iEverything” are not the sum total of their respective brands. They are the expression of particular qualities and attributes, the combined power of which make up a brand. The authentic brand of any company is comprised of many factors from product strategy and customer service to Web copy tone and product packaging…and almost everything in between that can create an emotional connection with a customer or prospect. In an era when companies routinely pivot -- or fail fast – is branding still viable?  The answer in this session is “yes” and several of the digital marketing tools currently available make brand evolution less painful, more data-driven and more cost-efficient.  Some highlights from this unConference session, moderate by Meghan Gardner of Leap, included:

•  Customers today expect similar things from their interactions with B2B companies as they do with B2C brands. Today, even deep technology companies must have the kind of engagement and open approach to communications that most consumer brands have mastered.
• The discipline need to define differentiated messaging still revolves around the central questions:
• Who are we?
• What do we do?
• Why do we do it better than anyone else?
• Why should anyone else care?
• Every company has a community with which it can test messaging and positioning. Digital tools – surveys, LinkedIn company pages, email marketing, online forums, social media platforms, mobile – allow companies to quickly vet messaging and gather quantitative data on message effectiveness.
• Brand is two-way conversation. If your company must pivot, having established a genuine rapport with your audience in advance is the best way to ease that transition.
• Similarly, if a company has not bothered to engage its audience then it will wind up “branding in a vacuum” which is ineffective and expensive.