Business Lessons from sucessful entrepreneurs and business leaders: LunchLearning.com

Reading time: 2 - 4 minutes

Video Time: 34 minutes 54 seconds

Effectively communicating something, anything, requires authenticity. A message without authenticity may be received, but it may not be a good message that gets across. A poorly crafted message can often backfire, bringing a sense of resentment or that the company has some dishonesty it wishes to hide. Matthew Haughey (@mathowie on Twitter), the founder of MetaFilter, one of TIME magazine’s 50 Best Websites, presents on the ability to communicate with customers in an authentic fashion.

The bandwagon of online communication is something that a plethora of companies have jumped on. However, not all companies have managed this well. A stellar example of this failure is the infamous “All I want for Christmas is a PSP” viral campaign that was immediately regarded as an insulting, stereotyping campaign that thoroughly alienated its market and was counter-productive. On the other hand, the Will it Blend? campaign, a clear marketing ploy, enjoys considerable success.

Authenticity, as Haughey puts it, is something that is remarkably simple, yet so often left by the wayside. It consists of the traditional values that people live by, such as honesty and ethical behavior. However, many of these elements seem to be forgotten or blown to the wayside in favor of strategies that offer a quick gain in return for long-term sustainability. The simple element of remembering that you are still working with other people and that the change of medium, from magazines, radio or television to Internet makes no difference to the fundamentals will resolve many of the conflicts that may arise.

Whether the platform consists of blogs, Facebook fan pages, newsletters or an attempt at a viral campaign, all companies want the same things: increased visibility, demonstrated benefits and, ultimately, increased sales. The secret is in engaging them in a fashion that is genuine. The short cuts, or get-rich-quick schemes may offer a good start, but that’s it. There is no longevity or any secret formula to achieving success. In the end, communicating online is the same as communicating anywhere else.

Reading time: 2 - 4 minutes

Video Time: 59 minutes 10 seconds

Metaphor or Facts? Logic or Emotion? Which is the best way to not only reach an audience but have that audience act?

In this excellent thought-provoking talk by entitled “The Science of Communications” sponsored by the AMS Journal’s AMS workshop, we hear from a variety of scientists and communications experts who tackle the idea of how to best communicate scientific discovery to an apparent apathetic world. The take-aways from these various opinions are bountiful, and if you listen all the way through, you’re mind will no doubt be racing about how effective your own efforts at communication are, whether they be personal or business related.

In the video, you’ll hear from American Meteorological Association’s Dr. Anthony Socci discusses the apparent value of “framing” a conversation or marketing message to yield greater adoption of an idea. . .particularly one that is new, or unpopular.

Socci is followed by professor of political science at The University of Michigan, Dr. Arthur Lupia. Lupia discusses decision-making, and how people make those decisions without good, solid information. In the field of politics, as Lupia this issue is endemic, and he talks about the corollaries to the Green Movement.

Molly Bentley, contributor to BBC Science, tackles the idea of how to simplify the extremely complex knowledge possessed by scientists into information that can be digested and embraced by a lay audience. This somewhat comical discussion of how such scientific discovery is presented to the non-scientific community currently, may serve as a reminder of just how many companies try to explain unsuccessfully their own products and mission to customers. It’s a case for technical writing at its best!

There is a lot here in this talk, feel free to skip around a bit, or listen all the way through. There is a lot to learn, and a lot to take notes about if you are a communicator, or even just someone responsible, or interested in, someone clearly understanding, embracing, and acting upon your message.

Reading time: 2 - 4 minutes

Video Time: 52 minutes 2 seconds

It isn’t always big companies pushing products that need marketing. The arts and nonprofits are struggling to survive and could manage, if only they had the public awareness that Subway’s five-dollar-footlong does. Unfortunately, the nature of their work does not lend itself well to a steady revenue stream. Michael Kaiser, President of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, United States cultural ambassador and weekly blogger for the Huffington Post, has been dubbed a miracle-worker for his successes in promoting the arts.

Promoting the arts is much like promoting anything else. The product, whether its art or a bottle of aspirin, must be able to elicit some kind of positive emotional response. Generating excitement creates passion and increased interest—which directly results in the increased flow of dollars. This basic observation is often lost in favor of subtle ideas and concepts on exactly how to generate excitement.

The second key element that Kaiser presses is that risk is the way to bring about growth. In uncertain times, the first reaction of a company is to hunker down, tie up loose ends and pare down offerings. While this does cut costs, it also severely restricts cash flows. Instead, Kaiser proposes, successfully in many cases, that boldness be the route to success. Taking risks, doing things differently and being inventive in communications will attract people.

In many ways, these two elements are related. People are interested in new things more than they are in the ten-cent price cut. Humans are creatures of habit and tend to make the same purchases they are accustomed to regardless of minor price fluctuations. However, with a new eye-catching product, they just might be inspired to give it a try.

Thanks for joining LunchLearning.com today! Enjoy your Lunch!

Reading time: 2 - 2 minutes

Video Time: 13 minutes 55 seconds

“In this world of digital, in this world of speed, in this world of fast. . .you’ve really gotta’ change it, and you’ve gotta’ make it happen differently. Right?!”

That ‘IT’, that Kodak’s Chief Marketing Officer, Jeffrey Hayzlett (@JeffreyHayzlett on Twitter) is referring to in this quick and snappy video, is the heartbeat of your business. In this video, presented at the Twitter-inspired “140″ conference in Las Vegas, Jeff shares with his audience some anecdotes about how he came to be one of the most active C-Level Twitterers and how Kodak leveraged its mass of social media “followers” to help re-brand what is being talked about as one of it’s most innovative recent products.

There are two simple lessons for marketers of all stripes. . .and business owners of all sizes. . .in Jeffrey’s presentation:

1. Remember, we do not have all the answers, and 2.) We’ve got to always keep our eye on what’s next.

Marketing complacency can not only be damaging to a product-line, but to the bottom-line as well.

Reading time: 2 - 4 minutes

Video Time: 41 minutes 49 seconds

Successful marketing is a furious, elusive beast that has billions of dollars poured into it every year, only to elude the grasp of those seeking it. Seth Godin, entrepreneur and author of the most popular ebook to date, Unleashing the Ideavirus, attacks marketing from a slightly different angle. Rather than viewing marketing as a push for the adoption of specific elements or products, Godin emphasizes that success will be determined by those who manage to shape the consciousness of the market.

The first example that Godin opens with is a prime example of achieving this phenomenon. Mechanically sliced bread, oft considered the greatest invention ever, was first prototyped in 1912. It wasn’t until 1930 that sliced bread became a nation-wide staple under the intensive marketing efforts of Wonder Bread. Until then, there wasn’t a perceived need for pre-sliced bread when it took mere moments to slice. Wonder Bread made the public feel that the inconvenience of unsliced bread was dramatic and secured its dominance while other companies, that produced sliced bread, have descended into obscurity.

Instead, many companies subscribe to what Godin refers to as the TV-Industrial Complex. It is an endless cycle of buying ads to achieve recognition to sell products to… buy more ads. The critical flaw with this plan is that the playing field has changed and that it no longer works. Two major changes have resulted in this marketing revolution: people have less time and more choices. They now have less time to receive the messages from standard advertising and there are now more options than ever. The end result is that things are ignored.

Difference, distinction, uniqueness or remarkableness all increase visibility beyond the static that drowns out the typical commercial. Success requires the ability to transcend above the noise and, once there, confer a message that resonates with the recipient and shapes their behavior.

Thanks for joining LunchLearning.com today! Enjoy your Lunch!

Reading time: 3 - 4 minutes

Video Time: 41 minutes 49 seconds

We’ll be wrapping up this week with a look at a somebody who, like some of this week’s predecessors, took on a serious subject and transformed it through humor. However, this time, instead of operating through print has his medium, we’ll be looking at somebody who works visually and aurally, delivering the bitter punchline with practiced poise. Jon Stewart, somewhere between a comedian, satirist, politico and reporter, is, in many ways, as powerful a representative of the news as traditional outlets like CNN.

What exactly did one man do to achieve such clout? He did something so extraordinarily simple that it hardly seems like anything noteworthy: he reached an entirely new segment of the population. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart features a nightly viewership of over one million individuals, many of which utilize the show as their primary source of news and, even more tellingly, did not watch news programs of any kind before. Despite it being a comedy program, the show is widely regarded to be as valid as many other sources of news.

Despite its appearance, the success of The Daily Show is largely about noticing an untapped market and the discovery of exactly what that market wants. The blend of wit and news, wrapped in a thick layer of truthiness (as popularized by Stewart’s contemporary, Stephen Colbert) was viewed as a respite from traditional news media outlets that were perceived as grim, packed with fluff, biased and often downright misleading. However, regardless of what studies show and proponents claim, Stewart tries to hammer home that he is not a journalist and his show is not real news. In either case, people love him and the show is an unequivocal success.

The following video is a biographical sketch of Jon Stewart, actually the second host of The Daily Show, but the one that introduced its current political leanings and brought it to stardom. While the easiest way to understand the draw, and hence the marketing insight, of The Daily Show would be to watch it in the company of individuals in the younger generation, an exploration of the man, and what put him there, is second best.

Thanks for joining LunchLearning.com today! Enjoy your Lunch!

Reading time: 3 - 4 minutes

Video Time: 35 minutes 25 seconds

Marissa Mayer (@MarissaMayer on Twitter) is the Vice President of Search Product and User Experience at Google. She has become a much recognized face of Google, often seen in interviews and speeches discussing Google’s current goals and achievements. In this speech given at Google Press Day in Paris, Mayer goes into detail about Google’s past, present, and future goals as a company.

Mayer begins the lecture with a quick introduction to the components of the search experience, which are specifically: comprehensiveness, relevance, speed, and user experience. Mayer stresses how Google has focused on each component to fine tune the overall search experience. When she describes the early days of Google, she marvels at how much Google and the internet have grown. When search first began, people were ready to sort through many websites to find the information they needed, but Google put its focus on relevance, aiming to place the best results first. This made Google extremely popular, just through people spreading the word, without any real advertisements.

Mayer explains how as information has increased rapidly on the web, it has become even more necessary to use search, and things like relevance and ranking become extremely important. She talks about how much information seeking has changed since search and the internet were introduced. At one point, we would have gone to the library, or asked other people when information was needed. Now, Google can answer a question in under a second. And despite using a lot of new features and capabilities, Google has remained clean and simple. Mayer describes many of these current capabilities in detail, for example things like spell correction, alternate queries, and sitelinks, all help make search more efficient and effective.

So, what will the future look like at Google? Google is working on answering questions even faster, according to Mayer, their goal is the speed of light. Of course, there are also numerous new features that Google is trying out. Developments in cross-language search which uses translation to search multiple languages, or universal search which offers up multiple types of links like images and videos that are all the most relevant to your search. One very interesting new capability is personalization, which takes a person’s search history and uses it to make search more relevant to the individual. The last ten minutes of the video includes a question and answer portion, which focuses on Google’s new developments.

It’s incredibly exciting to see what Google is coming up with to broaden and sharpen our search experience! So, enjoy this intriguing video about the future of search, and of course, Happy Learning!

Reading time: 2 - 4 minutes

Video Time: 56 minutes 11 seconds

The idea of Avon Products inspires a wide range of thoughts ranging from the image of door-to-door saleswomen and house parties to that of top-line perfumes and men’s fashion. However, two things that generally do not leap to mind is a fashion juggernaut and an enabler for thousands of women across the country. As a company sometimes referred to as ‘The Company of Women’, it is only natural to find a woman standing at its helm: Andrea Jung, currently ranked as the sixth most powerful woman in the United States according to Fortune Magazine. She is a critical piece of the force of Avon and a figure well worth considering.

However, to truly grasp the concepts that drive Avon, we have to step back an era. Before women were even permitted to vote, much less be accepted in the workplace, the original founder of Avon, under the name of the California Perfume Company, decided to work with a predominantly female sales force. The spiritual element, in addition to the business logic, of female independence resonated with the company and proved to be a potent asset.

Maintaining this spirit of supporting women’s independence has done much to encourage the longevity of Avon by pushing them to explore new markets and giving the company a core concept to rally around through the ages. This center on aiding women has pushed the company to enter markets where other companies have shied away from, such as in developing countries, where women are just beginning to enter the economic environment, and grow in times of poor economic growth from people with an entrepreneurial spirit being laid off seeking new opportunities.

This video looks at a variety of elements, from the importance of spirit, constant reinvention, and the capacity to do multiple things at the same time. Whether it’s the ability to look forward at the future without losing sight of what brought you to that point or to strive towards an ideal while remaining grounded in reality, Andrea Jung is a potent woman at the head of a powerful company that has its very spirit geared towards uplifting peoples.

Reading time: 3 - 4 minutes

Total Video Time: 21 minutes 5 seconds

Now that we have gotten an overview of social media and how it can help business, we can get into specifics. Let’s start with Facebook. When it started, Facebook seemed to be like MySpace, but for college students. Only college students could join, and while it seemed more sophisticated than MySpace, Facebook still boasted largely a “student” environment. Now, anyone can be on Facebook, and the rules have changed. Employers are using Facebook to scout new recruits, and see what their candidates are really like. Companies are using Facebook to reach untapped markets. The Facebook Era is in full swing.

Clara Shih (@clarashih on Twitter) wrote about the Facebook Era and how it has altered the business world since its inception. Shih explains how Facebook has changed the nature of business interactions, and even the social norms we use in our business interactions. Facebook is also a marketing tool that, used wisely, can be very profitable for companies. It is especially profitable because Facebook is free to join. Free advertising? Absolutely.

In this video, Shih talks about the Facebook Era and how she sees Facebook affecting the business world.

Some of the things you’ll learn in this video:

1. What the “Facebook era” is
2. How Facebook has evolved
3. How Facebook changes business relationships
4. How Facebook changes cultural norms
5. What the Facebook era means for business

From Clara’s bio: “Clara is founder and CEO of Hearsay Labs, which helps brands convert their Twitter and Facebook presence into actionable engagement opportunities and measurable sales. Clara’s new book, The Facebook Era: Tapping Online Social Networks to Build Better Products, Reach New Audiences, and Sell More Stuff has been featured in The New York Times, Fast Company, CRM Magazine, Selling Power Magazine, and is being used as a marketing textbook at Stanford and Harvard Business School. In 2007, Clara created the first business application on Facebook with her Faceconnector application, which integrates Facebook and Salesforce CRM.”

(from thefacebookera.com)

Thanks for joining LunchLearning.com today! Enjoy your Lunch!

Reading time: 4 - 6 minutes

Total Video Time: 53 minutes 36 seconds

The last few days, we’ve been looking at technological changes that can change the playing field that are just arriving or are on the distant horizon. Today, we’re stepping in a different direction and looking at something a little less physical and more conceptual: the transformation from push-based mass production to pull-based mass customization. Or, simply put, selling customers exactly what they want, not just whatever’s available.

Robert Brunner (@rdbrunner on Twitter), the former Director of Industrial Design at Apple and founder of ammunition, best known for designing the PowerBook, hiring his successor, Jonathan Ive, and winning 23 awards from the Industrial Designers Society of America speaks on the importance of the brand and how, more than ever, it’s defining your company. In this lecture piece, Brunner strives to drive home the impact of the brand. However, it’s a subtle, complex element. The brand is not a product, though it draws from it, and the brand is not advertising, though it’s often used in it. Brand is each individual’s emotions towards the company. Or, more generally and purposefully applied, the collective mood of the people. This becomes ever more important when increased customization increases the diversity in product style and thus diluting product recognition.

This power of the idea of the brand is especially important in today’s environment where the emphasis is not on mass production anymore, but mass customization. Businesses in all sorts of industries have adopted this position, whether exposing it openly or as one of their core elements. Burger King’s slogan, “Have it your way” and Dell’s built-to-order flexibility are two prominent adoptions of this concept.

Customization is a powerful element and people have already shown that they are willing to pay a premium to design things to their specifications. Whether it’s food, computers or even refrigerators or garage doors, if there’s an after-market customization available, it’s fully possible to modify it first. Why should somebody else benefit?

Think of the past, envision the future!

Thanks for joining LunchLearning.com today! Enjoy your Lunch!