This is seriously one of the best marketing campaigns I’ve seen in a long time. TD Ameritrade took the time to thank their customers in a very unique way. Take a few minutes and watch this.
Without happy customers, your business won’t last very long. What are you doing to make them feel special? I bet TD Ameritrade will have each of these customers for life (not to mention they did many other things during this campaign).
What if Cleveland would have said that before they drafted Lebron? Clearly, you have talent kid! But, we’re really looking for someone who has done this for a professional team for 7 years or more. Also, a certification or professional degree is preferred.
You just passed up on the most talented person!
They drove me crazy before I had experience. They drive me crazy with experience.
As a company, you should want the best talent. The world is changing. While the best choice at the time could have tons of experience and meet all of your requirements, you may be missing out on the candidate who can make the larger long term impact.
What if professional sports placed a higher emphasis on a body of work than they did potential? Think about that for a minute.
Stare at this while you think for a minute.
Experience can often times be the safest choice. You can grab a veteran who has been there before. But, things start to get interesting when you take someone with a decent amount of experience and a much higher upside. Do you grab the veteran and milk them for a few years or do you try to foster and groom the potential franchise player?
Sticking with sports, this can burn you. There are flops. Some picks don’t pan out. But, if you stay in your risk averse world, you’ll miss out on Lebron, Kobe, Durant, Kyrie or any other young star.
Look for passion. Look for natural talent (even if raw). Look for someone willing to bust their ass for you. The filters you build into the job requirement could eliminate the person you need.
Here are some of my favorite job descriptions, the best job descriptions in my mind:
They’re looking for talent. Plain and simple.
There are *incredible* hires with *tons* of experience. My point is that you should not create restrictive requirements if you’re looking for the best person for the job. Throw an incredibly bright 26 year old in the room with an extremely experienced candidate and see what happens. Hire slow, fire fast. Note: I am much older than 26.
Spoiler alert: Cleveland hired, but couldn’t retain Lebron.
Image via usfbps
Pretty clever use of video and social media here.
Story 1: Tweeting a prospect leads to Twilight marathons.
Story 2: Taking a free car leads to running your friend over while ghost riding the whip.
Want to build a brand? Want an incredible culture? You should go through all of these slides…
This video is amazing. Dedicate a few minutes to it and you won’t be disappointed. We all need a pep talk.
Yes. Feel free to skip the rest and buy a copy here – that isn’t an affiliate link because I live in North Carolina (wah wah wah).
First off, thanks to Jay Baer and C.C. Chapman for the copy of the book. I was selected by Jay via a blog post to receive a free copy and agreed to review the book. Pretty standard stuff. Thank you both for a copy of this great book!
Possibly the teeth… A couple of questions to think about before I dive into the book:
Think about those for a few minutes before reading further.
My guess is that most of the people reading this will answer “kind of” to the first three and may have a conflict to the last question.
Not straight of course… I read faster than that. I couldn’t really put the book down. The first reading session led me through 104 pages. The next day, I finished the book. It is a great read – and a quick one (in a good way). I have a busy job, a wife, an energetic 16 month old son, and we’re in the process of building a home. Things are busy. But, some things are worth making time for.
That’s an important premise in the book. Life is short. You live once.
Pause. Pause. Pause.
Where is the dramatic effect button? I’ve written a post about dealing with ambition. My last post was a video with Seth Godin about making art and leaving things behind. This was relevant to me.
I’m thankful. I have a great family. I have a great job. I have the ability to workshift within reason. I also have my share of challenges. Stretch goals. Internal conflicts. Doubt. Worry. Angst. Even finding ways to find an outlet for things I’m passionate about. This book will help with all of that.
Yep. I do it. If you have a dream and a manageable set of objections you can work around, why the hell aren’t you chasing it? Objections can include finances, location, time, family obligation, risk, etc. But, many times these are excuses. Some bigger than others. Some more difficult than others to overcome.
But again, we live once. 1. One. Uno. Once.
Regret is a bitter pill to swallow.
C.C. talks through this in a masterful way. You’ll read this book and feel like you need to switch some things up. Some of you will make drastic changes. All of you will be energized.
What are you doing with your passion? If you can plan around your objections, what next? How can you start to do something about it?
That’s where I’m at now. I have a plan. A loose one :). But, once I can start making some progress on it… I’ll share. I’ll probably share it first with my family and inner circle. And hopefully C.C. if he wants to hear it.
I’m putting what I’ve learned into action. I’ll take the ripple approach as I can’t really make the big splash at this time. But, any amount of progress is progress.
Go read it.
This is a powerful video. What are we leaving behind? Hopefully, more than just a bunch of marketing acronyms and SEO rich content. Make some art friends.
College students are now declaring majors in social media.
I haven’t looked over the curriculum for a major like this, but I have concerns. Why should you care about my concerns?
It’s a blended major of graphic design, communications, business and marketing, psychology and statistics.
I agree with this approach. I’ve blogged about it recently. Marketing requires a diverse set of skills. But, I think this is a bad move.
Social media is a marketing tactic. You can’t only do social media. A social media strategy without a solid marketing strategy around it is doomed to fail. It’s like ordering salad dressing without the salad.
73% of CEOs think marketers don’t understand basic business terminology and objectives.
Scary, right? (data is here)
Why in the world would we continue to stretch our profession even thinner when we are dealing with a perception problem?
You can’t make a rock sexy. If your product doesn’t meet customer needs, social media won’t help you. Marketers need an understanding of the functions of product management, sales, customer service and operations. Silos aren’t very successful.
Period. Exclamation point. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying. There are millions of ways to do this and they don’t all involve spamming promo codes and limited time deals. You can drive sales by being customer focused (Zappos, Gary V, etc.). You can drive sales through content marketing (Hubspot).
But, if you think for a second that bringing in dollars doesn’t matter, keep collecting those LinkedIn endorsements for your pending job search.
The sliced bread was. You’re majoring in the usage of tools and tactics deployed on those tools. Tools change. You need to understand the core concepts of marketing and how to apply them to any medium.
The best SEO / SEM guys understand content and storytelling better than you do. Mastering the tools by which they deliver content is secondary to the mastery of manipulating the content to be user-focused.
This isn’t changing. No matter how many books, keynotes, studies, or infographics are created. There is an inherent fear of entering a world where there appears to be a greater loss of control for many folks. The way to overcome this is by having a thorough understanding of traditional marketing and being a change agent within an organization. By establishing that comfort level and shared knowledge, you can gradually do more with social media.
For most organizations, it isn’t either / or. It requires a tactful mix of old and new.
The .com bubble happened. Everyone loved Web 2.0. Social media is the latest darling. The biggest shift has already happened though. Surprisingly, not a ton of folks are paying attention to it.
Revolutionary? Nah, common sense. But, if your product sucks, customers think you suck. If your people suck, customers know you suck.
Who you hitch your career to is extremely important. More than ever, I’d argue. You’re defined by the experiences you have. You can do something you consider to be exciting and sexy for ACME, Inc. or you can bust your hump showing that you drive value and try to start doing more exciting and sexy things at a great company.
Communication is a constant. Social media is changing at a rapid pace. Something better will come along. It will become more and more seamless. Soon, you’ll be naked. People will know who you are. They’ll know what you’re capable of. They’ll know the warts of your product. You’ll be standing in front of the classroom naked. Tweeting. Sharing. And, eventually crying when you are asked to show the value you’re adding.
This isn’t new stuff. A class in social media should be required at every major university. I’d argue that a major is the wrong approach though. If we had mastered our output of great marketers and the business world was saturated – sure, go ahead and make them social media majors. But, most marketers still don’t get it.
Can we fix that first?
It may not dramatically increase applicants as fast. It may not bring in the immediate tuition dollars. But, if companies see that you’re producing results-driven marketers, that’s the boat you want to be in.
Image: mindaugasdanys
Follow it here on Facebook. Edit: the page is now removed, but a search of Pigalle Boston will retrieve tons of screenshots.
Note: This is a screenshot of the public Facebook conversation and not an endorsement or indictment of either party.
Do you ever ask yourself that? Seriously?
I find that more often than not, we are never satisfied. It isn’t about money. It isn’t about power. It isn’t about greed.
The grass isn’t always greener on the other side. Sure, there is a new challenge there. But, a year from now – you’ll be back here.
You’ll be wondering how to turn your ambition into the next great career move. The next relationship. The next personal achievement.
We’re taking it one game at a time.
An overused sports cliché. I always forget how to make that é. I have to search for it and copy and paste every time. I should learn more code. Why don’t I have that memorized? I probably use it five times per year and have to go to Google each time. I’m lame. There I go again.
But, are we taking it one game at a time? Are you assessing the wins and losses on a daily basis to see that no matter how much we think it sucks, that we’re making progress. If we’re smart, we can take the things that got the best of us and improve on them in the second half. A lame sports analogy, but it works for me.
Thanksgiving is over. Now we go back to work. We go back to the grind. We go back to forgetting to tell the people we care about what we’re thankful for. We’ll save those up for Thanksgiving next year.
Do you ever think about that? With all of our insecurities and imperfections, there are others who would lose a limb to trade places with us. But, life is miserable when you only get 95% of that bonus. Things are tough when you can’t leave the office at 5pm every day.
I’m driven… to a fault. I bang my head against the wall a ton. But, I think I have a coping mechanism after years of doing this.
Ambition is a drug that makes its addicts potential madmen.
Emile M. Cioran
Crush your job. That is a constant. But, use the ambitious energy to do other things in your time away from work. Build something. Work on a startup. Help people. Write letters. Love more. Talk more. Spend more time with your family. Teach your child something new.
Take the freakin’ time to pay attention to what is around you.
I’m guilty. I’m thankful for the folks who punch me in the face to make me realize that though. We only live once. Suck it up and file the negative things away. Use your brain [and heart] to do something great instead of moping.
Ambition can be a bitch. Don’t let it get you down.