BOOTSTRAPPING A NEW IDEA. Judette Coward-Puglisi

Selling our new software that measures the ROI on communication and PR campaigns has not been as hard as I expected. This week my company, Mango Media Caribbean tied up some loose sales ends with a public sector organisation and a multinational firm working in the oil and gas sector. We also expect a financial services company to sign up for a 12 month contract in the next four weeks. We made these crucial sales after three months of client prospecting and some long hours of doing our homework. In these months we looked at some of the best practices in some of the large corporations.

You see large companies that sell to other businesses have a massive advantage, an entire team that takes a pulse rate of the market sometimes by posing a singular question: "What do you want?" Once the need has been ascertained, another department takes over to make the deal happen.

At Mango Media Caribbean we are small but no less ambitious. Having determined what the corporate communications market was missing in Trinidad and Tobago, we spent months researching and analysing the new software acquisition. We developed a survey to make sure that we were not investing in something that no one wanted to buy. We took pains with the selection of our software developer and we decided who would be the clients most likely to buy into our new suite of services. Once we discovered who they were we then pre-sold them on the idea.

Why would a company be willing to buy into an idea? Our research indicated that while our clients- corporate communicators - were very interested in or PR measurement services, they didn't necessarily want to add this function to their already overtaxed list of things to do. If we could meet a need that no one else could, they were willing to fund the development of our new ROI communication services.

Be warned though, this is a very difficult strategy. It isn't easy to find scenarios where a big client has an unmet need that they a)realize is a need and b)haven't found a solution for. If you do find one, then you have the challenge of convincing the company that you have the expertise to develop and deliver a working product/service.. It helped that some of these clients were existing customers with whom we had a history and credibility.

Please don't get me wrong, if I am enjoying success with this it is only because I failed at it several times before. Like any entrepreneurial endeavor bootstrapping a business is incredibly hard work. But if you want a strategy that makes money from the beginning, this is one to look at.

The lesson here is that once you sell the idea/prototype, you have revenue that is somewhat guaranteed. Finding new customers thereafter becomes less painstaking.

Judette Coward Puglisi is the founder and managing director of a strategic comunications, brand development firm in Port of Spain, Trinidad. Visit her corporate website at www.mangomediacaribbean.com.

Brand building without deep pockets…A retailer’s experience

If you take as a given –and I do- that in today’s new economy a company can only remain competitive if it engages in strong brand building, then the next staggering question you might ask is: How? With the high cost of advertising, an increasingly fragmented media market and the advent of social media which allows consumers to talk directly to each other and bypass the traditional methods of getting information, many small business owners are forced to come up with increasingly creative ways to build their brand. While this has its challenges, it also presents a great opportunity to think creatively as one Caribbean based luxury goods store found out after its brand was re-energised without a massive dent in its pocket.

This company had long enjoyed a sterling reputation for its branded luxury goods from Europe and the United States. Its niche market were the high-end users of luxury items. But within the last decade the store had lagging sales. The brand had become diluted, poor management, poor merchandising and a lack of customer relationship management drove many of the store’s clients’ away and the company found itself in the black.

A new CEO was hired and as she examined the company and her role, she knew that one of the cornerstones to move the company into a position of profitability was to focus on the company’s linkage to its client base. From the outset three things were clear: 1) the new CEO had to make brand building part of the strategic plan, 2) the company had no money and could not rely heavily on mass media to promote their brand and 3) all the alternative approaches to brand building had to be integrated into an overall concept of the stores’ identity.

These were daunting tasks. But the 42-year-old female executive-who had arrived fresh from a top-level merchandising job in New York was not the faint-hearted type. Her first task was to get rid of her ad agency. Although the agency had served them moderately well, the directors of the luxury good store were not satisfied with the alternatives they presented for their media strategies.
“ I didn’t want to spend large sums of money on ads that reached no one. Clearly we had lost focus, we needed to recreate our lost luster, reach out to clients who had no longer identified with us. We had to start from scratch with only a name that had some residual good will.”

Clearly this was a woman who knew her stuff and instead of an agency she decided she would work closely with a brand consultant.. When they met the consultant was struck by the CEOs glamour, sense of style and knowledge of the high end market. “You are the epitomy of your brand,” she declared. The brand expert decided to increase the director’s visibility and suggested a series of personality profiles in the press (free publicity), a weekly lifestyle column and a radio ad where the CEO talked about lifestyles.

The executive was becoming her brand’s champion because the consultant felt she possessed the authority and the ability to ensure that her company’s brand identity was being delivered in a way that rang true.

The strategy worked; former customers like what they read and heard. They identified with the new CEO and because they wanted the lifestyle she eschewed they came in to the stores in droves. The stores were starting to become relevant to its audience once again.

There were other strategies employed, additional approaches to fuel word of mouth communications included placement of the store’s personal care line of products at elite and selective fitness centers. The company also started sponsoring women friendly events. Under much media hype, they launched a Fund to assist women with the cost of their cervical cancer operations. They also co- sponsored a large commercial bank’s 5k Breast Cancer Awareness Run. Sponsorship was viewed as a way of bolstering the brand’s image among concentrated groups of potential customers.
“Our aim was not to create visibility for visibility’s sake; without exception our efforts were directed at supporting the client’s brand identity,” says the consultant.

With sales on the rise and brand awareness increased, the CEO, who was now into her second year, felt that the time had come to involve her customers more intimately in the brand . She created events that would create a personal experience between the brand and the client. And therein was born free sampling days, customer appreciation nights, customer loyalty programmes. And once again sales soared.

The CEO inherited many liabilities when she joined her new firm but the liabilities forced her to think creatively. It didn’t happen in a New York minute. Developing alternative approaches to brand building is never easy but with dedication and commitment from those at the top, finding alternatives to mass media advertising can be worth the time and personal investment.

Independent thinking required for successful entrepreneurship

Independence. That’s why a majority of employees strike out on their own. Or so says a recent US survey put out by that country’s labour department. According to the survey there are more than 15 million self-employed people in America with independents representing one of the fastest growing sectors in that economy.
There is something glorious about being in charge of a small independent firm. The downfall is that sometimes the size of a small firm can preclude its effective exploitation of new markets; the advantage comes from knowing that your size allows for energetic experimentation.

Consider the growth of Elaine Singh, owner of a copywriting agency, “I believe that the reason for my success is that I have been able to align myself with some of the biggest advertising agencies in the business and created a win/win situation for us both,” said Singh. The 37-year-old is able to offer her specialised skills for a very reasonable price, the larger agencies embrace her because they can lower their employment and wage bill by cutting back on their health care, pension and other responsibilities.

Because of her firm’s size- Singh has one full time assistant and a part time accountant- she is able to continuously reinvent herself. She recently added photography and design to her list of services by forming strategic partnerships with other small firms. Singh is a believer in reinvention as the key to entrepreneurial success. “Reinvention is not about changing what is, but about creating what isn’t.” At the heart of Singh’s statement is perhaps a realisation that small companies in the new era need not be around forever and what matters most is the burst they may have in values creation rather than any dramatic claim of being around for 100 years.

Perhaps this may be the fundamental difference between the new enterprise and the old. Between the old firm and the new. The old enterprise viewed permanence as good. And set up vast building with glossy atriums to prove it. The glossier the atrium, well, the better the business. Atrium envy ruled. In the new enterprise there is no such envy because there are no such buildings. People are connected in wired quadrants that allows them to communicate, work and mange themselves in offices without walls and borderless communities. The size of the atrium is irrelevant, how high the mind can soar and what it can create in a short period of time are the determining factors.

In the new enterprise entrepreneurs like Singh recognises the need for a new reality, which does not surround exclusive bottom line issues. “If I focus on the bottom line and profits only I won’t be happy, instead I look around at other small business models and I would like to emulate those that place emphasis on their human community. Profits are vital but so too is the connectivity and the network.”
There are thousands like Singh running small firms, forming strategic alliances and setting their own strategies on how to function in the corporate world. There is no other alternative for Singh. “The idea of being a salaried worker in an organisation is unpalatable for me. There is just something about working for myself; I really, truly do love what I do.”

Leadership Challenges

Leadership is sometimes difficult especially when your work involves volunteers. Unlike a corporation, members of a volunteer organisation are not motivated by monetary rewards but by individual and personal aspirations. Some use it to test their mettle, others to win friends and develop skills while others look to build influence and their careers. All are to be encouraged, as a leader of several volunteer projects, committees and associations, I have learnt over the years that volunteers are to be supported and their individual needs met, but it ought to be done within a group context.

I had reason to ponder this lately when an individual member of the Association of which I am President took it upon herself to secure an appointment from our International Office without informing the local board, in fact, board members only learnt about it when it was announced in an email that went out to all other members, This went against one of the Association’s fundamental rules of email engagement for which the volunteer was privy too.

Members of the board called, upset. Frankly they had every reason to be. The board members’, all senior communicators, felt that basic protocol was breached.

It was a difficult position to be in, the volunteer is young, at the start of her career in communications, eager and a terrific member of the Association. But I had a responsibility to the group and so I told her that while she should go ahead and pursue opportunities presented to her she needed to be aware of the respect that must be paid to the local board and the process of communications. We are a communication association, communications is at the heart of what we do, at a basic level members need to get that at least right.

I also reminded the volunteer about the need to be inclusive, an absolute requirement in volunteerism since no matter what your individual goals I have found that in both volunteer and non-volunteer organisations, relationships are the key. It is relationships that cause members to ask constantly: "How can I help?” rather than, “What’s in it for me.”

Cool tool for blogging

Yesterday, I had my assistant sign me up for CoComment, a site that allows me to track comments and conversations from over 150,000 web sites.

I found their offering useful because lately I have been leaving a few postings at sites that I will seldom visit. CoComment allows me to be part of selected conversations by keep track of the discussions that interest me.

I recommend this as another cool Web 2. 0 tool that will help you blog sucessfully.

Getting the employee communication mix right

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Throwing a dinner party for a few of your friends? What do you think will determine that it is the best party of their lives? The wine? The five course meal? The cutlery that you delicately display. All this will probably be of some importance but you can bet that two or three of your friends will probably be able to serve better wines, have a gourmet meal catered and display sliver that outshines yours. The product is necessary but not sufficient, what will matter is who you invite to the table, the kind of atmosphere you create, and how well you ensure that your guests’ happiness are of paramount importance.

Running a business is very much like having a dinner party because the quality of employees you invite to your office spaces and the strategies you create to encourage them to stay will have a boomerang effect on your bottom line. Create passion in your employees, and watch your profits soar. Often times though what lies between the passion an employee has for his/her work and the profits that can accrue once they have that drive, is the chief executive officer. The business owner. The managing director. The boss.

"Sometimes I feel that in this company our leaders are more concerned with making themselves look good than they are with genuine straightforward human interaction,’ says one thirty-five year middle-manager when asked about what she saw were some of the company's major organisational challenges. This correlates with a survey done by the International Association of Business Communicators whose audit of American companies discovered that:
10% of employees felt that executives were aware of their concerns
15% agreed that head office communicated effectively
19% agreed that executives and bosses sought their views
21% agreed that they were informed of plans and directions
23% agreed that executives communicated well

They were shabby scores but they revealed a certain truth that may be applicable globally. The way we engage employees, like we do our guests at a dinner party, has a lot to do with communications. Effective communications is about listening as much as it is about talking. It is about connection and engaging employees every day by taking them on a personal journey of ideas. Be assured that will come along if they trust you to respect them and if your journey is meaningful to them.
Business management guru Kjelle Nordstom writes that there are four ways senior managers and bosses can communicate with people: either you appeal to their Reason, Affection, Intuition or their Desire.

Reason equates with logic, affection concerns love, intuition has everything to do with insight and desire has to do with passion. Every time we communicate we should be asking: Are we using the right mix? Striking the right keys? Our answer may require us to rethink how much reason has to do with ensuring success and profits. We may discover that if we use reason only, we may be speaking to our employees in terms of pure economic rationality and creating competence without commitment. That spells bad news, primarily because we are no longer made up of local villages.
Globalisation demands that we compete with the very best and if we have employees who simply do their jobs, who turn up for work and leave when the clock strikes the appointed hour, then we pave the way for disaster as exemplified by rapid turnovers, diminishing returns and collapsed businesses.

Getting the employee communication mix right

.

Throwing a dinner party for a few of your friends? What do you think will determine that it is the best party of their lives? The wine? The five course meal? The cutlery that you delicately display. All this will probably be of some importance but you can bet that two or three of your friends will probably be able to serve better wines, have a gourmet meal catered and display sliver that outshines yours. The product is necessary but not sufficient, what will matter is who you invite to the table, the kind of atmosphere you create, and how well you ensure that your guests’ happiness are of paramount importance.

Running a business is very much like having a dinner party because the quality of employees you invite to your office spaces and the strategies you create to encourage them to stay will have a boomerang effect on your bottom line. Create passion in your employees, and watch your profits soar. Often times though what lies between the passion an employee has for his/her work and the profits that can accrue once they have that drive, is the chief executive officer. The business owner. The managing director. The boss.

"Sometimes I feel that in this company our leaders are more concerned with making themselves look good than they are with genuine straightforward human interaction,’ says one thirty-five year middle-manager when asked about what she saw were some of the company's major organisational challenges. This correlates with a survey done by the International Association of Business Communicators whose audit of American companies discovered that:
10% of employees felt that executives were aware of their concerns
15% agreed that head office communicated effectively
19% agreed that executives and bosses sought their views
21% agreed that they were informed of plans and directions
23% agreed that executives communicated well

They were shabby scores but they revealed a certain truth that may be applicable globally. The way we engage employees, like we do our guests at a dinner party, has a lot to do with communications. Effective communications is about listening as much as it is about talking. It is about connection and engaging employees every day by taking them on a personal journey of ideas. Be assured that will come along if they trust you to respect them and if your journey is meaningful to them.
Business management guru Kjelle Nordstom writes that there are four ways senior managers and bosses can communicate with people: either you appeal to their Reason, Affection, Intuition or their Desire.

Reason equates with logic, affection concerns love, intuition has everything to do with insight and desire has to do with passion. Every time we communicate we should be asking: Are we using the right mix? Striking the right keys? Our answer may require us to rethink how much reason has to do with ensuring success and profits. We may discover that if we use reason only, we may be speaking to our employees in terms of pure economic rationality and creating competence without commitment. That spells bad news, primarily because we are no longer made up of local villages.
Globalisation demands that we compete with the very best and if we have employees who simply do their jobs, who turn up for work and leave when the clock strikes the appointed hour, then we pave the way for disaster as exemplified by rapid turnovers, diminishing returns and collapsed businesses.

So what's this blogging thing anyway?

Blogs are a trendy way to publish on line, connect with your audience and build your brand architecture. While it is a frequent aspect of the techno savvy’ style, few small business owners, even if they internet users, really know what blogs are. But here are some startling statistics that should make all entrepreneurs take their heads out from the sand.

According to Technocratti, a firm devoted to tracking more than 22.9 million blogs, with one being added in cyberspace every second. Surprised? Don’t be. The rise of blogs have an almost direct correlation with the fall in the public’s trust of major institutions: think Enron.

But even on a less grand scale, employees and consumers have been demanding a level of engagement from institutions which before now had been limited. Regarded as they new influencers, these groups now use the web to publish their opinions, and have engaged like-minded individuals in the conversation.

Bloggers, then are using the Internet and are conveying their own experiences and views on a continuous basis. Many seek to be experts in their own domain, engaging with and learning from the broadest possible audience of peers who are willing to improve the content as part of the conversation.

There are many types of bloggers. The best ones operate in a style that is very similar to the top media personnel. They speak at public events, they attract thousands of readers to their blogs per month and they get loads of citations. They difference is that they are not always linked to a brand or a corporation. There are also the corporate bloggers: the CEO who uses his /her blog to share information about the company’s strategic moves or opine about the company’s products and policies. Finally there are others who simply want to create a community just to share their interests and combine their own knowledge

Communication World (CW) Tests The Virtual Waters

I was excited to receive May- June issue of CW, IABC’s magazine for communications management. Executive editor Natasha Nicholson got it spot on, the potential phenomena of Second Life, the realities of the collaborative discussions taking place in virtual world has changed the way we communicate. Revolutionised it really.

I found Slivia Cambie interview with Malaysian born writer Yang–May Ooi particularly relevant. In the article, A Novel Approach, Ooi discusses how she moved from the solitary process of writing two novels to the interactive world of daily blogging, an activity that opened up a whole new set of relationships and created new opportunities . “On line communications has led to real world connections,” says Ooi, “I speak at book events in Malaysia. I’ve been commissioned to write articles for the UK writer’s journal … and contribute to a book of essays on Malaysia…”

Her comments tacked back to questions that both my friend Karel Mc Intosh and my assistant Jamila Bannister asked me this week about the purpose of this blog (I am in the process of transitioning to a hosted, better designed blog). For me the success of this blog comed with the relationships that I build and the views that I help to change.

Like Ooi, writing is a fluid process. I channel my thoughts and I get to find a new way of reflecting on topics that are buried deep inside. Call it excavation. But writing has always done that for me. Blogging is just adding a new medium. If it helps the site to win top billings with some search engine. Great! But I am more concerned with a more fundamental principle: did I connect

What a minimum wage paying job taught me.

My first job was a model /slash sales girl in a Canadian store called “Units”. It was the kind of store where you couldn't figure out what was sold. The clothes were easy knits, colourful, with no tight elastic band. They were stacked in cubicle and wrapped in plastic with cardboard backing so they could keep their form. The only time the customers knew the nature of the product was from a ramp stationed in the middle of the store on which - more frequently at the mall's busy hours- a bunch of sales associates would walk . If was a lot of fun! I was 19, it was a minimum wage paying job. I got no more than CDN $5.25 per hour. Still, we had some serious sales targets to meet. What follows are the three key lessons I learnt from the time I worked for minimum wages.

1. A Good Boss Will Notice Your Worth.
I was a West Indian in a foreign culture. You can bet that I didn't want to mess up. I was always the first to arrive and the last to fold the clothes back into their plastic wrappings. I treated customers, my boss and my colleagues respectfully but with a lot of Caribbean warmth. I took out trash even though it was not in my job description and was told that my personality caused the team to bond in ways they did not before.
After a few months, my boss called me into his office for my first performance review. He said that I had done well and that $.10 was the average raise for his employees. He asked what I thought I deserved. I replied that since I had done no more or less than what others did, I deserved the standard.
"Why" my boss pressed.
"Because what I am doing is not hard, you can easily find someone to replace me."

My boss increased my salary by $1.00 raise per hour. I was astounded. "I need to make sure you stay with us a few years more” he said, “so that the store across the street never has the opportunity to grab you.”

Lesson: Even when you think no one notices, someone always does

2. Sometimes a Few Good People Is All It Takes.

During the mall's busiest hours we had to make sure we were on the ramp constantly. The busyness of that activity generated the interest and sales peaked according to the activity on the ramp. But the effort required coordination between the girls showing the clothes and the sales assistants on the ground. Each model was assigned an assistant to help seal the deal. One day I was on the ramp and noticed that my sales assistant was overwhelmed with a surprising influx of customers So I picked up some of the slack. During my sets, I walked off the ramp, greeted customers, showed them the clothes, heightened their interest, sealed the deal before passing the sale on to the assistant. She was grateful and did the same for me several times over. We made an unbeatable team.

Lesson: By seeking solutions for the team and going the distance you win a tremendous amount of support and respect.

3. Connect With What You Are Doing and Do What You Love
I enjoy working hard doing things that I love. I was nineteen, I was around fashion, design, and working in another country. Who was I to complain about the wage. I know some people are prone to think: ‘I am not going to work hard given the pay I get’, instead they prefer to wait until they 'higher' position before taking on more. I never did, money never was my motivator, learning was.

Looking back, that minimum wage job taught me a lot. Now that I have my own communications firm, I practice what I learnt straight from the lessons of my youth, earning a minimum wage in Canada.

BUILDING A COMMUNICATIONS FIRM AT 29.

I bet you’ve seen them in the magazines. The young entrepreneurs, usually about 25. Bright. Converse on their feet. Cocky. At the height of the Internet bubble, they were the toast of the Valley and world. They possessed a certain bravado and were determined to make millions before they turned thirty. Some of them did. Most didn’t. But the ones who survived, like the creators of Google, helped turn living-room startups into billion-dollar companies. They amassed enough wealth to retire without a worry and decide what kind of life they want at 30.

These entrepreneurs defy the statistics; the research that states only the top quartile of entrepreneurs make more wages than their corporate-employed counterparts and that 75% of business owners would be better off financially with a good old regular job. Still, it is not the ability to make enormous sums of money that I marvel at, but the ages at which they begin. These entrepreneurs are 'mother’s-milk-in-my-face still young', and it raises a whole set of questions for many as to when is a good time to start a business.

I started my own branding and communications firms at age 29, and I will tell you if I knew back then the necessities for starting-up, I may not have taken my leap of faith. I didn’t have a network. Certainly no real business experience and no wealth of any kind to bootstrap my business. The only thing I had was optimism and the ability to live like a minimalist, with Crix and coffee at every single meal.

I subsequently read the best predictor of entrepreneurship is not age, not income, not wealth, it is ability. Oddly enough, think of a U shaped curve. People with very low and very high in ability tend to start companies. The middle usually stays put. Here’s what I read from a research paper on the issue:

We hypothesize that individuals with very low ability are more likely to take up self employment. These individuals may simply lack the discipline to work under someone else's authority, or in teams. They may also compare their low positions in their organizations and their low remunerations with those of higher ability individuals with similar human capital, and feel frustrated at the difference. They would thus be tempted to strike it out on their own. It is an empirical question whether their self-employment income would be higher than their paid employment income. On the other hand, individuals with very high ability are those with high energy levels, who get things done, who have strong interpersonal skills, and who are creative problem solvers. These individuals may feel that, in spite of their above average remuneration, they can do better on their own. This is because they have to share with their principals a substantial percentage of the value they contribute to their organizations. Finally, individuals of average ability are likely to be compensated in line with their human capital - they are therefore less likely to search for self-employment opportunities.

I knew on what side of the curve I stood from very early on, what I didn’t know was age can bring:

Money - It helps to have assets.

Connections - By the time you are 38, your friends and co-workers will have switched companies, changed jobs, and moved up the corporate ladder so there is easier access to decision makers and the people neded to help you get your business off the ground.

Wisdom - You don't have to learn or invent many of the standard processes .

Patience - You learn how to wait for the pitch that is in your business' capacity.

Still, as I grow older in the business and trade one set of skill sets for another, I recognise that age has less to do with success in business than opportunity and perseverance. Spend some time looking for the right opportunity to hitch your entrepreneurial star and watch your chances of success improve.

Will an MBA serve me well?

Truth is, when I delivered the opening remarks at the International Association of Business Communicators career day at UWI, St. Augustine and told some 100 students that they needed to find fresh ways of connecting the same old dots, I was in fact doing some soul searching of my own. As it stands, a mere two years before hitting the big 40, I too have been thinking about what next. What’s the next step in my career? The next score in my entrepreneurial goal post? The next big thing. And for a few shrill moments I considered a MBA.

I became fascinated with images of smiling graduates from the business schools that advertised the benefits of its acquisition. Principals at these schools crowed the benefits. My network, I was assured, would open up to the local powerful and influential (this was attractive since I earned my first Masters degree from a Boston university). Naturally, there was the curriculum, business schools had massaged their content. UWI had advertised for a lecturer in entrepreneurial studies. MBA students were spending time in other countries, combining their field of studies with languages. They were tackling interdisciplinary exercises with macro themes like globalisation and environmental sustainability. More importantly, perhaps more seductively, I was being influenced by my peers. It seemed that just about every professional communicator was going after a MBA. Anna Maria Garcia Brooks, the GM of marketing communications, and a recently minted MBA said to a group of professionals in her field that being elevated to executive management, "we as communicators, would, through sheer necessity, have to adopt a more general approach to our business. ….Continuous learning, beyond the field of Communications is crucial to making you more relevant, and in taking the profession center stage."

These were the benefits and like all they would accrue to me. Me. Me. But in all the analysis, there was one thing that was missing. You see, the thought of doing an MBA failed to excite me. When I told people about my ruminations it excited them. Their eyes sparkled. They were impressed. They pressed me more about my expectations and I began to wonder if I was considering getting the degree just to elicit that sparkle, to be part of that elite crowd that wore the MBA badge of honour. And then I had to write that speech for the group of one hundred 20-year olds ( a few were older and mature students) and in it, I wrote that "the learning experience was simply a journey into the discovery of who we really are." As I wrote it and when I said it, a veil was removed from my consciousness.

You see every day I study for my MBA. I begin my studies every day and at 4 a.m. every morning when I head to POS to run my communications and PR firm. I practice all the marketing theories as I contemplate how to position and price and promote our new software. I consider the human resource element as I grapple with attracting and keeping the right talent. I look at process mapping, benchmarking. Everyday, I get to be a leader. Mostly, I succeed but sometimes I fail and it is in those failures that I learn the very real lessons of management.

Author Henry Mintzberg, in his ‘Managers Not MBAs: A Hard Look at the Soft Practice of Managing and Management Development,’ was speaking directly to me when he said, "that when it comes to starting companies, the stumbling--not the studying--is what counts. " Bona fide entrepreneurs such as Bill Gates and Apple's Steve Jobs typically shunned M.B.A. programs because they're too anxious to work on their own ideas, says Mintzberg.Well an MBA work? For others, maybe, but not for me. I have applied for an MFA in creative writing. I think it is a good complement to my MSc which is marketing communications. It is also a good strategic fit, one of my employees loves publishing and editorial and I am hoping that she will be encouraged to further develop that arm of our business. My degree will add the creative element. Also my degree is portable, I can write and make money from anywhere in the world.

But for all that strategic talk about its fit with my current business model, there is an important factor that I failed to mention. The MFA excites me. And for all the wine in Tuscany, it is something that an MBA could never do.

Judette Coward Puglisi is the Managing Director of Mango Media Caribbean a strategic PR firm that measures the return on investment in communications and PR projects. She is the founder and current president of the International Association of Business Communicators

New Viral Media Culture Dethrones King Of Talk

Take a good look at my picture. Go ahead. See. I wear a full set of ‘nappy hair’ on my head. Frankly, that gives me the full right to be grateful that the overbearing Don Imus was fired and that the subsequent public outcry assures that if he ever lands in front of a microphone again, his language will not be so inflammatory.

Don Imus was the king of talk radio. When I lived in Boston in the late eighties to mid-nineties, his off-the-cuff remarks were a the first thing people discussed as they waited in line at the donut and coffee shop at Boylston Street. I could never understand the fascination. Slurs on race and gender were all too common. Were they funny? No. For me, it was bigotry at its worst being passed as comedy and that cut closely to the very essence of my identity.

Still, what was fascinating for me last week was not only the issue of censorship, language and the media but also the power of our new viral media culture. It was this that fanned the blaze of anger that eventually toppled Don Imus.

Here is how it was reportedly played out. A 26-year old from the liberal group Media Matters posts a video clip of Imus’ remarks on the group’s web site and also puts it up on You Tube.

Media Matters also sent emails to journalists and women’s groups. Young black journalists were among the first to demand that the 68-year old be ousted. They were quickly joined by women’s groups who sent out action alerts encouraging the public to flood CBS and NBC with a ‘Dump Don,’ message.

As Newsweek reported, Imus, armed only with a microphone, a relic from another age, could not keep with the new technology. In the end, WOMM (word of mouth marketing) won.

Speech to communications students at UWI

I really enjoy addrressing university students.

I am not too old to remember what it was like to be 18 and full of hope for the future and yet so scared to go out into it.

In 2006, at the invitation of the Communications Students Association, I addressed 70 students at UWI in a 3-hour presentation about my journey in corporate communications. This occured before I founded IABC T&T but I knew then that having met them, that I would return and bring with me fresh ways for the them to connect the theories they were learning with real world communications practice.

On Friday 13th. April, lucky Friday as it was dubbed, the President's Visioning Team of IABC T&T hosted, " The Future Is Not That Scary," a one-day workshop comprising panellists, presentations and speed communications sessions. The objective was for 100 students to connect the dots between campus life, communication theories and the world of work. I delivered the following presentation to open the session.

“The Future Is Not That Scary.”
Opening remarks-Judette Coward-Puglisi

Dr. Godfrey Steele, lecturer, in the Communications Section, Department of Liberal Art
Fellow IABC T& T Board Members
Distinguished Panellists
Members of the media
Ladies and gentlemen
My dear students.....

It was about one -year ago that we met, where at your invitation, I shared with you my own journey in the field of corporate communications. I must say that even though I was the guest of honour, I was in fact in awe of you...

I was amazed at your energy…
Captivated by your enthusiasm….
And delighted by this great, big appetite you seem to have for learning... all things communications

At the time, you forced me to think about what it was like to be 18 years old and have no idea of how to connect what I was learning to the real world. Heck, I didn't want to know about the real world… campus life, the limes, the friends, the learning…being part of the guild... for me that was the sweet life… things were as good as they could ever get.

Funny how reality bites!

Because here I am 20 years later.... happy about the choices that I made, glad to have made certain decisions about the direction of my career and passionate…. absolutely passionate about my chosen profession...your future profession...communications.

My dear students,

It was you that inspired this career day, because having been in your presence last year; I made the decision to harness some of the best talent in the IABC T&T to form a President’s Visioning Team lead by Nadine Johnson, who is your presenter for today.

Together with Brevard Nelson of GHL, Anna Walcott Hardy here at UWI and Karel Mc Intosh, one of today's panellists…..all of us IABC T& T members… as well your own Dr. Godfrey Steele….

Together, we decided to introduce you to the idea of IABC T&T....a global network of communicators located in every corner of the world linking students with superb mentoring programmes, knowledge resources, discussion forums and career development.

By being engaged with the possibility, the very idea of forming a student membership of IABC T& T you stand the opportunity to network with of the best senior communicators in the country as well as other student communicators from around the world.

My dear students,

WHAT DO I WANT FROM YOU TO GET OUT OF THIS DAY ...Let me answer that by telling you two stories.... My first story involves a friend who I went to visit about one month ago...now just a bit of background on my friend. She is in her late 30s ... an accomplished communicator... single… and has recently bought her own home. Sounds good? Think again.

My friend does not like the position she holds in her company, she hates the fact that she is single and despises the fact that her home provides her with a whole heap of new bills.

In any case, my friend needs someone to talk to…. so I go to her home for the very first time to be part of the soul searching effort and it is there…. in her living room… that I notice a sheet on the ground ....

“Why do you have your sheet on the ground?” I ask.
“To cover the carpet,” she replies matter-of-factly.
And when she says that I am so startled that I pull at the grey cotton sheet and underneath it lies a $5,000.00 Crate and Barrel rug that she keeps covered with a sheet simply because she does not want it to get dirty.... (PAUSE)

Can you imagine what it would be like if she could appreciate the bold patterns and ‘plushness’ of her carpet every day? I bet she would feel more proud of her space and more proud of herself in that space….

Which brings me to my second story...I want you to remember as you sit through this day that life is a journey to a discovery of who you really are ... It took me a while to get this lesson, that life really is just about everyday experiences, teaching you, moment in, moment out, who you really are. That every experience is here to teach just that... just a bit more fully...

For a long time, I wanted to be somebody else. I mean growing up I didn't have a lot of role models. I was born in l969. I wanted to be a TV journalist. There was no Oprah when I was a teen….no real models upon whose career I could pattern. I remember thinking one time that I wanted to be like Dianna Ross until I realised… it was my aha moment ….when I discovered that no matter how many apples I ate I could never have her ultra slender waistline nor her hair….. unless I went to Frederick Street and bought myself some… (PAUSE for chuckle)

It took some time but I CAME TO THE REALISATION THAT I COULD BE AN AFRO WEARING , NON CONFORMING ….NO CORPORATE SUIT DRESSING... COMMUNICATOR AND STILL GET RESPECT FROM MY PEERS BECAUSE OF THE SOLID FOUNDATION THAT I STARTED TO BUILD RIGHT HERE IN THIS FACULTY.

I tell you these two stories because today… you have the opportunity to remove all the grey sheets that may cloud your thinking…
Today, you have the opportunity to build your foundation and begin the discovery of having all that you dream of for your professional lives....

Today feel free to be challenged….
Today feel free to grow….

Don’t resist any new ways you might learn of connecting the same old dots...for in the end it is IABC T&T’s wish that you see that the future ….THE FUTURE… is really not that scary.

IS COMMUNICATIONS ABOUT TELLING THE TRUTH

Every once in a while I get to be part of an interview where no amount of preparation makes you anticipate the direction the questioning will take. One which require rapid fire thinking all under the glare of camera lights and in front of a prime time morning audience. Last week, during a round of television appearances for the International Association of Business Communicators Trinidad and Tobago (IABC T& T), I had one such interview. Both Sue Barrat and I (Sue is a Communication lecturer at UWI) had gone on the set of Morning Edition to talk about IABC T&T and an upcoming seminar that both our organisations were co-hosting. Morgan Job, the gifted intellectual, who spouts both poetry and theory in the same breath, was the host and as we should have expected immediately put us in the firing line. "How can communicators speak the truth when truth is at best subjective ," pressed Job, "and what happens to the truth when the news you have to communicate is bad ?

See what I mean about thinking on your feet.

After the interview, we were told our answers shot like a dart to the heart of the matter but it was clear as IABC T&T members criss-crossed the various television shows that the role of communications is often misunderstood. It was therefore important to get beyond the 30 second sound-bite.

In the corporate world, when we talk about communications we really mean 'persuasion.' For example, in internal communications when we say we want to communicate to employees, what we mean is that we want to convince employees of something: that management knows what it's doing, that employees should be doing X or Y, that the new benefits package isn't really worse than the old one, that the share prices will rise again. We communicate in order to induce people to change their attitudes and, ultimately, their behavior. But here is the conundrum. Imparting information is just one part of the process. But does it motivate employees to change their behaviour? No.

Evangelising the message

In my communications training a critical success factor in the learning process is to get participants to actively engage in what is being taught. For instance, at a recent training session on press release writing I had my class comb the newspapers for different kinds of releases and then dissect them. I had them think like an editor and then give me three different ways to get just one message out. This kind engagement caused one seasoned participant to exclaim that for the first time in her 15-year career she was seeing message dissemination in a fresh and new way.

When comunicating with employees, it is the same. Just thinking about an issue can be a form of active engagement that can lead to significant, long-lasting attitude change as long as the individual is given sufficient time to reflect and a framework to guide his thinking in the desired direction. As I told Morgan Job, communications is about content and context.
That framework can be built through a variety of mediums and the best corporate communicators in the business know that the messenger is as critical as the message. Anna-Maria Garcia Brooks, GM of Marketing Communications at Republic Bank, drove this point home when she addressed members of the International Association of Business T&T. According Garcia-Brooks, sometimes the message is dismissed simply because of who is communicating it.
In such a case, evangelising the mesage through varied sources can work. Communicators can help a critical mass of influencers persuade themselves of the rightness of a particular position that needs to be communicated and then let the influencers pass that message on to the mass of people. The communicator's job would be to build strong relationships with the influencers and provide a framework the majority can use to reflect on and assimilate the new ideas.
Influencers can spread the message through informal chats, face to face meeting, conversations around the cooler. They can be trainers or presenters, the employee who staff looks up to. They can be visible and vocal spokespeople in staff meetings. Their role is to target the so-called "early majority," the third of the organisation who, while not leaders, are willing to pick up on new ideas championed by influencers.

A second strategy would be to use the appropriate collateral. Just be careful that the collateral never becomes the strategy and is viewed for the purpose its name suggests i.e. it should serve as the support for the message. The brochures, magazines, envelope stuffers etc. that we spend so much time on writing, designing and printing is valuable because they all brand the message, through color, design, language, and content, in a way that associates it with positive feelings and demonstrates its consistency with the organisation's mission. Still, the problem of course lies with the engagement. People need to interact with the message in the collateral so it should be balanced by the other techniques.

And what about the message?

I am not sure how I answered Morgan Job before the live cameras but whatever I said I hope I got across my belief that all messages no matter if they communicated face-to-face or through another source, they need to have one thing in common. They need to be credible i.e. consistent with the organisation's behavior. Do not say the pension policy is better than the previous one if it is not. Instead communicate the benefits of it and state how you will work on correcting any perceived flaws. Give a time frame.

Communications is not spin. People are not stupid and they know when what you say does not match how you act. It is at that point you can lose trust.

Second, the message must be clear. Recently, at global meeting of business communicators in San Diego when the Association's new tagline was unveiled the VP of IABC T&T, Maria Mc Millan, wisely asked if anyone from the brand development team translated the new tagine into different languages to make sure that the meaning was the same for commnicators in France, Thailand and Nigeria. It was a critical point. Don't make the mistake of believing that the meaning of words is the same for everyone or that a sentence that appears absolutely unambiguous to you will be understood the same way by everyone in your audience.
Finally whatever message that we as communicators send out, it cannot stand alone. To be conducive to change the corporate culture must be one in which people are rewarded for communicating, even when the message they deliver may be unwelcome. " As marketing communicaons professionals, whether we function at executive level or not, we must be the champion and the voice of stakeholders and ensure that their needs are understood and met, and that the right decisions are made -consistently," declared Garcia -Brooks.

So you see Mr. Job, good comunication is about truth telling.

IABC Trinidad and Tobago takes communications centre stage

The Trinidad and Tobago Chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators will host the breakfast meeting, Taking communications centre stage: Forging new paradigms for the profession on March 29, 2007 from 7.00 a.m. to 9.30 a.m. at the Tourism Development Company, which is located at Maritime Plaza, Barataria (Trinidad).

Taking communications from the periphery to the inner circle of decision-making is a huge achievement. Ask Anna-Maria Garcia-Brooks, General Manager – Group Marketing and Communications at Republic Bank Limited, who has made the envied step from middle management to executive management. As one of the event’s feature speakers, Garcia-Brooks will discuss how communicators can give their function that quantum leap. Joining her for this discussion will be Dr Godfrey Steele, academic pioneer and lecturer at the University of the West Indies (UWI), who successfully established UWI’s bachelor’s in communications programme, and is responsible for training future communicators.

Book your space, and learn:
· how to become more visible
· techniques to make the communication discipline more strategic
· how to make communications matter to your CEO/ senior executives
· the applicability of academia to practice
· intellectual foundations for communications.
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The attendance fee for IABC Members is TT$300, and TT$350 for non-members. To register, call Jane Sadaphal at 621-3830 or email iabctt@gmail.com.

Cultivating the Creative Class. Dismissing those who think outside the box may be the worst thing you can do for your company. Judette Coward-Puglisi

Being creative on demand is dammed work. It can cause you to over eat or not eat at all. It can churn your stomach in knots and cause you to have sleepless nights. Still, any member of the creative class worth his i Pod will tell you that the pay off beats the price. It comes in the brainstorming session (preferably over a large pizza with everything on it) and it gets better still when the idea begins to take shape on paper. But best yet is when the idea flies, when that tiny nugget of information you had in your head one week or one year before adds significantly to your company's bottom line. The sense of satisfaction is sweeter than any frosted chocolate cake.

That's why fostering creativity in your organisation is critical. A unique business idea can come from anywhere: the business logic, the accounting process, the culture. But what it really boils down to is the people. Being different is the key. Creativity is about seeing things differently. Little happens in the innovation department when a group of fifty-something-year-old males from the same culture and background get together to make a decision about bringing a product to market. Chances are however, if you take that group and added a mix of cultures, gender, backgrounds and different way of thinking you will generate a plethora of ideas and a ton load of energy.

That's why firms need to hire and depend on those who can come up with unique ideas. The ones who are a little different. But this is where the trouble starts, because uniqueness and difference are often the preserve of people, who judged against the average corporate citizen, often seem a little strange. They break the rules. They question norms. They are prepared to take risks, sometimes leaving the organisation which entraps them to set up a company of their own. Does this serve the firm any good? My answer would be an emphatic no! Sameness is a direct route to nowhere. If we are all willing to follow conventions, to think like all the rest, we will see the same things, hear the same things, hire the same people and develop identical products and services. We will create a sea of normality and drown in it. In 2007, Sameness Inc. is bankrupt.

But cultivating the creative types takes a special leader who is willing to see things differently. Firstly, creative work is not automated, and definitely not linear. It stops and it starts. I remember 5 years ago at the E&Y Entrepreneur of the Year conference, one speaker said that one of his software developers after creating and bringing to market an innovative software would often disappear from the company for weeks on end, virtually unreachable by phone to a remote part of India, the country from which he came. The speaker expressed his frustration at first until he recognised his developer's weird habit was one stream of his company's immense wealth. After a while he thought that instead of working against his talent he'd work with him and proceeded to give him 6 weeks off after a particularly grueling period of innovation.

The fact is if you let creative types make the rules, within limits - you don't want utter confusion- if you allow them time for blue sky thinking, protect them from idea killers and add liberal doses of fun to your hopefully non-cubicle environment, and maybe pizza after long meetings, you'll be creating streams of revenues that may allow you to overlook personal idiosyncrasies.

So go ahead and cultivate the creative class. The alternative is nightmarish. A company doomed to produce ideas that everyone else has already seen.

Judette Coward-Puglisi is the managing director of Mango Media Caribbean

( www.mangomediacaribbean.com ), a strategic PR and brand development firm. She is the founder & current president of the International Association of Business Communicators, Trinidad & Tobago.

Stop the stories. Corporate communications is about serious measurement. Judette Coward-Puglisi

Check any corporate communications department in any part of the world and you will find that they all have one thing in common. They are led by some of the brightest, most enthusiastic professionals in the organisation. The trouble though is that at the seat of power, that cherry red, high-gloss mahogany table with a photograph of the organisation's founder smiling benignly over, the voice of communicators is either never heard or given the final 15 minutes on the agenda.

Responsibility may come from within. For decades, professionals have polished their skills, built their relationships and returned to school to add an impressive array of letters to their name. But while they have been honing the communications aspect of their craft, they have done so at the expense of their corporate business goals. It's the bottom line baby! And communicators have simply not positioned themselves to be measured against what really matters to the CEO: revenue and profit.

Just look at some of the tools practitioners use: press clip books chock full of the latest releases, ad equivalency rates and anecdotes. None of it measures the link between communications and the corporate business goals. Check out though the other senior managers. In the board room, finance, operations and sales executives walk the talk. Armed with the visualisation tools, intelligence, profit and loss statements, they stride into the board room prepared to defend every last dollar spent, and demonstrate how they add value. They walk out with increases in their budget.

Communication professionals need a similar set of cojones. Not possessing the metrics, not knowing how to link the value of communications to the business goals, and not knowing how your PR spend adds value simply does not cut it and does absolutely no service to the profession. According to writer Julie Mc Namara, writing in the International Association of Business Communicators publications, Communications World: "Measuring the effectiveness of PR is critical to moving PR from a tactical function to a strategic component of your company's plan for success. But the old ways of counting clips just aren't good enough to convince today's management executives that their investment in PR and overall communications is paying off."

So how do you begin to add value to the business discussion? Firstly, there is need for alignment. Business, no matter what the size, is concerned either about retaining or growing their customer base. Understanding how this is to be achieved is critical. Does your CEO want to grow business in the region by 20 per cent? Then that goal is to be your goal. Does he or she want to increase customer purchase of product X by 50 per cent? Then that goal is your goal. Does he or she want to generate web-based sales by 40 per cent? Then... well, you get the picture.

With clear business objectives in mind, you can build your communications plan with very specific strategies. For example, if your CEO wanted to increase Product X's sales in Jamaica by 40 per cent, you might develop a strategy of becoming better known and more visible among influential bloggers on the island who write about products within your category. Suppose you got 75 per cent of Jamaican bloggers (your target was 70 per cent) to mention your company's name and product X, and your sales team was able to meet its target directly because of these strategies, you can joyously claim your contribution to your company's success.

Of course measuring communications intelligence can go far beyond that. Visualisation and media intelligence tools from firms such as Factiva and Delahaye offer custom-configured research that perform impressive media monitoring services while offering comparative metrics across time, space and other variables. By efficiently monitoring communications programmes and media, and linking the results of these programmes to company objectives, corporate communications professionals become more valuable to their organisation.

However you decide to measure, forget the anecdotes about your success and apply the rigour. You'll find that the respect that you deserve is only one invitation to the inner circle away.

Judette Coward -Puglisi is the Managing Director of Mango Media Caribbean www.mangomediacaribbean.com, a firm that uses powerful metrics to measure the impact of corporate communications and public relations. She is the founder and president of the International Association of Business Communicators, Trinidad and Tobago.

Reputation management for independents

Craft your reputation and watch your business grow. Judette Coward Puglisi

Call yourself a free agent? Then you identify with a group of people who have shown their finger to the corporate world. You celebrate your freedom. You no longer respond to the whims of an unreasonable boss, the vicissitudes of corporate strategising and the politics around the water cooler. You can pack up your talent and take it elsewhere. You have choices. Or do you?

After 4 years of flying solo and 3 years of growing a successful strategic PR firm, I know all too well that freedom you seek can be constrained, not by an intemperate boss, but by things more ominous. Cuts in the corporate budget, a client’s revised strategy, a negative turn in the economy all serve to curtail growth. This, I know, can be terrifying because in the pursuit of freedom what you really crave is security. The thought is not at all oxymoronic, not when you consider that end-of-month financial commitments don’t ebb and flow. The question then is how do you create stability in your career as a free lancer which in itself is governed by an ability to move quickly and be flexible? I believe the answer lies in how you decide to carve your reputation.

Your free lance reputation is built the first day at work on the job, whether that space is in your bedroom, garage or well appointed office. It develops with every phone call you make, with every ally, and in every negotiation. Columnist Margaret Hefferman writing in the business magazine Fast Company Inc. says that, “every detail of every relationship combines to form one big reputation. Whether good or bad, each exchange you have at work, about work, says something about you. And while the business world may be a big place, your industry and your company are surprisingly parochial.”

The truth is through word of mouth, everyone knows whether the goods or services you sell are good, if you are reliable, if your fees are commensurate with your products and whether or not you deliver when you say you will.

“Reputation,” Shakespeare once said, “is the immediate jewel of your soul.” He was right. More important I have found it is the one thing, as a free lancer, that sticks with you and if negative can have an earthquake impact on your career. Consider the case of Michael, a free lance designer I started to work with when I started out on my own seven years ago. Michael was brilliant, one of those artistic types who you can hire by just looking at his portfolio. Sadly, I did just that and while his genius could never be questioned, Michael should never have struck out on his own. Lazy and defensive, he constantly missed deadlines and landed me in trouble with one of my clients because he failed to deliver a design that complimented a script. A background check on Michael revealed a past that was littered with similar behaviour, he had created a negative impression that would soon become a permanent part of his career.

As a free agent projects will come and go but clients will stay with you once you deliver; they will also spread the good news about you as your reputation for service builds up over time. Having never had the time for social networking a colleague, Jane, spent most of her free time not in bars or water holes but coming up with mind expanding programmes for her work in volunteer organisations. As a project leader her ideas were successfully executed and she developed a reputation for being a strong strategist with an uncanny ability to harness the energy of teams. 5 years of working at it consistently, she found that her ideas were more readily accepted and that she could easily get resources committed to her ideas from her group’s senior executives/ board members. Her reputation had made her job a whole lot easier.

Crafting your reputation requires some soul searching. You’ve got to understand your values and take stock of who you are now and what you’d like to stand for in the future. Don’t expect it to be easy. It requires honesty. There's no point trying to build up a reputation as a team player if you're a loner, or a brainstormer if you love tactical work. But when you can define what you'd like your reputation to be, you're effectively defining your career narrative as a free lancer. That will help you make choices. It will draw you the right staff and keep you focused on accepting the projects that are consistent with how you want to grow. More importantly, as you continue to build your good name you will see that no matter what the vagaries of business, clients will continue to work with you.

Judette Coward-Puglisi is the managing director of Mango Media Caribbean (www.mangomediacaribbean.com), a strategic PR and brand development firm. She is the founder & current president of the International Association of Business Communicators, Trinidad & Tobago

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