The Underdog Effect

Splitting my time.

I'm now splitting my time between:

1) This blog
2) Rizen's new blog: http://www.rizencreative.com/blog/
3) Twitter: http://twitter.com/rizencreative
4) Serving my clients
5) Running a business
6) Raising a family
7) The rest of life

So, please, forgive me if I don't post all that frequently as we get into the holiday season. But feel free to check out #2 and #3.

Thanks for reading.

Re-organizing. It's not just for automakers anymore.

By any rational standard, GM needs to be reorganized. This behemoth of the auto industry is bogged down by too many old agreements, unnecessary dealerships, and redundant brands.

Its model was great 60 years ago. But it simply isn’t built for the 21st Century.

But I got news: your company probably isn’t either.

You have staff in the wrong positions. You have management that doesn’t know how to cope with employees checking Facebook and Twitter incessantly. You have a culture that seeks to control every message.

YOU need to be reorganized.

You need to be flexible. Interesting. Engaging. You need people who can organize, prioritize and act. You need to learn how to get social media on your agenda without (in most cases) letting it set the agenda.

And while you still may need a receptionist, fancy lobby and national TV spots, you should start with the premise that you probably don’t.

Instead, begin with the understanding that the most important thing is to connect with like-minded individuals. Then reorganize to meet their needs (and wants).

The good news is that underdog companies, whether based in Boise or Budapest, are best positioned to make this transition. Your size, focus and willingness to adapt make taking the necessary action -- action that establishment brands see as too radical or unpractical -- simple.

It’s OK if it is an evolution and not a revolution. But start today. Do something.

Where there is chaos, there is opportunity. The key is to be organized in such a way that you can turn it to your advantage.

The hard work of targetting your message.

So now you can you can buy "hyper localized" ads on the Weather Channel's web site.

Or you can place your paid message on a local blog, newspaper or broadcast channel site, or Facebook.

Then, there's the old standbys: AdWords, Yahoo search, and Double Click.

None of these are Web 2.0 strategies. They are basically old-style advertising adapted to the Internet. They are paid advertising. But more local, more contextual and more targeted than anything that was easily accessible 10 years ago.

Sure, in the past we could target. We could hire sign-wavers (you don't get much more geographically-specific than that). Or sponsor a local golf tournament. Or hide business cards in the relevant books at the library.

But those strategies all took tremendous amount of time, effort and man-power...and still were not as effective as these.

Thing is, the right way to treat these strategies--to test and measure these strategies--is to take a lesson from the techniques they are replacing. They need to be worked on every day. Tracked. Tweaked. EVERY DAY! When the guy on corner A wasn't producing, we moved him to corner B. When the golf tournament sponsorship yielded few sales, we tweaked our approach. When the business-card-in-the-book-thing yielded nothing, we stopped (dear God, I hope you stopped).

Approach these Internet-based tactics the same way. Work on them every day. Tweak your language, your placement, your media. Your ROI will improve. I promise.

A side note: don't game the system. It ruins it for all of us. Laughing Squid recently temporarily stopped using all adwords because the JackAsses promoting Yes on Measure 8 (in California) were buying AdWords on sites that promoted No on Measure 8. Nobody wins. Don't do that. It makes you look like an idiot and is tandamount to putting business cards in books at the library.