Over the past few months, a lot of what our team has been speaking, writing, and studying about relates to the philosophy that it’s okayto fail, as long as you are able to learn from it and, in the end, come out achieving success.
After reading our latest study “Use of Testing in Email Marketing” – which concludes by saying “if you’re not failing, you’re not learning” – I began thinking about how, as an entrepreneur and business owner, it was extremely important for me to embrace this philosophy early on and realize that it expands to every aspect of business. I’ll be the first to say it, failing isn’t fun! Doing so however, can be enlightening and isn’t something you should fear. If you fear failure, you will likely refrain from taking risks and experimenting with new ideas that can ultimately move you ahead. I have gone through the “fail, learn and improve” process numerous times and each time I’ve learned more about it. One such lesson is that sometimes “the fail” isn’t always obvious. The below video is comedy and not relevant to my particular FAIL, but it’s a Fail Video worth watching.
There are times when the big FAIL sign isn’t held up to alert you, “the fail” is often something you have to keep an eye out for. This eye-opening lesson came upon me in early 2007 when eROI was going through a big transition period accompanied by lot of growing pains. Going though this period certainly made me stronger as a leader, us stronger as a company and created a culture where my employees have a stronger voice and a bigger influence in the ongoing success of eROI -it however was an emotional and professional journey to get to this point and one that I actually documented in a 5 part blog post back in the summer of 2007. If you are so inclined, the entire series can be found in the eROI Days archive for you reading pleasure but to sum it up:
The Fail
I had assumed that I was connected to the thoughts of each employee and each department because I had a hands-on management approach and frequently interacted socially with my employees. I assumed that the agency was well aligned internally and that that everyone was happy, felt valued and felt they had a voice, both on a project level and within the agency as a whole.
This past Monday the entire Account Department attended Portland Advertising Federation’s AE Bootcamp. Some of the best of the best of Portland’s advertising executive world (Peter Levitan, Phil Reilly, Jerry Ketel, Rebecca Armstrong, and Paige McCarthy) were brought together to share their wisdom, experience, and expectations on what is required to reach “Total AEness.” I thoroughly enjoyed each presentation and it was refreshing to have a PAF event topic that spoke directly to the accounts side of the agency.
In particular, I found Phil Reilly’s talk to be very interesting. He started off by posing the question, “how many of you have a difficult time dealing with your creatives?” There were many hands raised throughout the room but I was not surprised to see a that none of the ten eROI account executives had a hand in the air. I am proud to say this is something that we do not struggle with as an agency. This led me to ask the question “why?” (more…)
The Portland Creative Community took some bold steps with its launch of the Portland Ad Federation Rosey Awards website themed “Nothing Says I’m Better than you Like a Rosey.” The messaging has an East Coast directness to it that takes many Portlanders by surprise in a city that fosters friendliness to strangers, foes, and friends. However, I think it’s the perfect time for Portland to step up and talk with confidence about its creative talent here. Yes, we’ve recently been discovered by the NY Times, Wall Street Journal, and other publications as the destination for hipsters (employed and unemployed) to hang out. But, we aren’t getting much positive press for having the second highest unemployment in the country. Now is the right time to shout from the roof-tops that Portland creative agencies do kick-ass work! Kudos to Anthill Marketing for the concept, design, and messaging in the site and entire Roseys this year!
2009 PAF Rosey Awards site
I’m not so sure this site would work in most other industries as it is definitely edgy, controversial, and provocative, but I think it’s a shot in the arm that Portland needs. The true test is to see if agencies from other cities take notice. Then, an interesting dialog will begin.
You’ll start to see this campaign promoted more on Twitter (I love the “Rosey Smack Feed” section of the ‘Win Tix’ part of the site), Facebook, and other blogs in the upcoming months. I’ve got to sign off from this blog post to think of some good Smack Talk myself – submit your own here >>
Yesterday, Chanin Ballance (founder/CEO of viaLanguage), Mitch Daugherty (founder of Morange Design), and I (the eROI guy) got together to plan what we’d talk about for a webinar about Bootstrapping and our personal experiences with self-induced starvation and endurance thru the early days. It was like catching up with old friends after a couple years – the instant bond entrepreneurs share in dredging up old stories that weren’t fun at the time, but are great memories in retrospect. The OEN Webinar is set for June 17 (registration isn’t live yet, but will be shortly) and we’re going to use a different format than the usual put-your-audience-to-sleep-with-powerpoint. We are going to try to re-create the casual, round-table discussion among entrepreneurs sharing candid stories. Some of the topics will include:
– Risk vs Reward – How do you know if it makes sense to bootstrap your idea?
– Keep your Day Job – The stress of self funding with no income can sometimes lead to failure
– Cash Flow – How to get a handle on your most important business aspect
– How to market your business on a shoestring budget
– Why most business models don’t need funding as it can be a big distraction
Here is my twitter stream from this morning’s Portland Business Journal Power Breakfast event where Ziba Founder, Sohrab Vossoughi, inspired me from a creative and entrepreneurial standpoint. Sorry for the upside down notes, but you’ve got to start at the bottom and read up:
Craft culture is mostly anti-Big which is why #portland has few fortune 500 companies here about 1 hour agofrom TwitterBerry
Sohrab – branding portland – it has a craft culture. About the work, unpretentious, very real, natural about 1 hour agofrom TwitterBerry
Tribal love – costco – amazing brand. costco members and employees love that brand. Costco does not care about wall st, but main st about 2 hours agofrom TwitterBerry
Starbucks is trying to capture its dna that is there but they’ve lost their way. Now, more about efficiency and profit, not the experience about 2 hours agofrom TwitterBerry
You need to create love with your consumers. All touchpoints need to fully connect with specific target market about 2 hours agofrom TwitterBerry
Not sure there is much biz there, but that’s really the point. My wife and I are going to a pretty remote area of the country and we’re looking forward to some good outdoor adventure there.
I’ll share some appropriate pics and video upon my return and try to make it somewhat relevant to the online marketing world, but for now, I’m going to enjoy a well-deserved week off blog posts, among others. Did a little research on YouTube, and thought I’d share this one:
A dude on the internet referred to Navy Fire Controlman 2nd Class Petty Officer Russell Tavares as “a nerd” in an online trollfight. In one of the more dramatic tales of internet rage we’ve seen lately, the 27-year-old Tavares, who believed himself to not be a nerd, hopped in his car and sped off 1,300 miles from Virginia to Texas, where the name-caller lived.
Tavares photographed road snapshots along his route, and posted the images online, as if to prove to his internet peers that he was not a luzer. When he got to there, he burned the dude’s trailer down. Tavares has been sentenced to 7 years in prison for arson. Snip:
The feud started when Anderson, who runs a haunted house near Waco, joined a picture-sharing Web site and posted his artwork and political views. After he blocked some people from his page because of insults and foul language, they retaliated by making obscene digitally altered pictures of him, he said.
Anderson, who went by the screen name “Johnny Darkness,” traded barbs with Tavares, aka “PyroDice.” Investigators say Tavares boiled over when Anderson called him a nerd and posted a digitally altered photo making Tavares look like a skinny boy in high-water pants, holding a gun and a laptop under a “Revenge of the Nerds” sign.
“Back away from the laptop,” the voice inside my head pleaded with my irrational ‘addicted to email’ self. It was a snowy, clear morning in Central Oregon and I had at least a 1/2 hour before my kids or the rest of my family woke up. It was prime email-checking time. But this time, I fought the urge. I was on vacation and I needed to unplug after a hectic, insanely busy December at work.
An amazing thing happened. I succeeded in NOT checking my email. Here’s how I did it:
1) I kept my laptop closed. An open laptop screen is like the gateway drug to email addiction. Keep it closed. Period.
2) I found a distraction, otherwise known as a healthy activity. A brisk walk accross the meadow with my dog, a lovable but goofy yellow lab.
3) I found another distraction – finishing up a great entrepreneurial book called “Small Giants” by Bo Burlingham.
4) Have an awesome plan for the day – went skiing at Mt. Bachelor with a friend. We happened to have a bluebird day with 11 inches of dry powder.
5) Stretch, relax, find a hot tub and submerge for an hour, then eat well with friends and family that night.
6) Check email the next morning – don’t kid yourself into thinking that you can avoid email forever – this just causes more anxiety of returning to an overwhelming and urgent stack of emails in your inbox.
What do you do when it gets a little loud in an open office environment? One eROI employee, who was on an important client call, created a sound barrier under his desk. Yep, we’re pretty creative here at eROI.
Cheers.
The Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas has it all in a big way. All the big boys show their wares at the 1.6 million square foot tradeshow. Rumor circulated that Sony spent more than $20 million on its booth and Panasonic, Samsung, Intel, Microsoft, Yahoo, and others were right there with Sony in spending and precense at the show.
However, there were only a couple hundred brave souls (out of the 150,000 attendees) who witnessed the sick beauty of the TASER booth. Just our luck to know that TASER is introducing its law enforcement, 50,000 volt, electric-pulse guns to consumers so we can all have them in our homes and shoot them at suspicious neighbors.
My associates talked me into being a human gueanie pig to demo the electric shock experience of a TASER simulation. Actually, it was the TASER guy telling me I was going to lose my “Man Card” (whatever that is) if I didn’t step up to the plate (or electric chair). They delivered a 2-second, 50,000 volt shock from my shoulder to my hip and I would have collapsed if the two TASER beefcakes didn’t hold me up to keep me standing. I felt my muscles seizing for 20 seconds after the shock and I cramped up later in the day. I’m still a little concerned that I smelled burning for a minute after it happened. I think it might have been my brain.
Why don’t email marketers know that my house consists of dirty diapers and baby formula? No, I don’t have some weird fetish, but we did recently have a newborn and I can’t figure out why legitimate email marketers and spammers haven’t caught on. Babies ‘R Us – this is your queue. Spammers – you are getting so predictable. I get the same thing every day:
Presciption “Enhancing” drugs
Porn Spam
Software
Logo Design, Corporate Identity
Break the cycle and send me some new content. I’ll write about it. I promise.
Black and White OR White and Black - The other week Anna Yeaman at StyleCampaign put forth an idea and backed it up with a test on the concept of the uses of black and white as a background in an email and how it performs. Her test has been on my mind making me take a closer look at not only our [...]
Below is a list of real holidays, wacky holidays, and pop culture events in March and ideas you can utilize to develop timely and relevant email marketing campaigns.
Here it is, your March Email Marketing Calendar.
