YES, THANK YOU, PLEASE.

Raise your hand if you have sent a “Thank You” message in the last five days.

Oh, I see, I am addressing a group of very sad people; people to whom nobody has done a favor, given a referral or invited to join a group in quite a while; people who didn’t receive an answer when they asked an acquaintance to give their daughter some tips for their college interview; or who haven’t needed a substitute for their carpool; people to whom nobody has written a LinkedIn comment.  I suppose those people exist.

But anyone else can grab a pen or a laptop or a smartphone, and write a short and simple message and know for sure that somebody is having a better day because they were acknowledged.

IT’S WHAT WE BELIEVE

And we stick to it. “Inside Out” works. Meaning, advertising that comes from the inside, expressing what the users love about a product, not what the marketing team thinks is the big differentiator; why the operators prefer using a particular machine, which may be an obscure feature that actually adds comfort; the reasons some people refuse to get vaccinated…

Which brings us to the real challenge we’re facing right now. Beyond figuring out how to convince those reluctant to get the vax, we need to keep in mind that they are not a block of people acting for the same reasons, and reachable through the same channels and media, but many, many different groups, each one with their very own values, fears, worries and concerns, and each needed to be found and touched in a way they find familiar and non-threatening.

NETWORKING IN THE DAYS OF COVID

Staying in touch, productively and safely, with old business acquaintances and friends, and making new ones, are tough-to-overcome challenges brought to us courtesy of the pandemic. But we have a couple of examples that show how relationships can still be created through masked and socially-distanced human interaction. 

Inside Out Communications supports the work of the Boys and Girls Clubs, and we’re committed members of the Milford Area Chamber of Commerce, so we donated cuts of grass-fed beef from agency client Del Terruño to the two organizations for auctioning at their recent virtual fundraising events. Maria Stearns, our Managing Director, followed up immediately with the winners of the auction, and personally delivered the cuts. Guess what? In both cases, the winners turned out to be very closely connected to the food and hospitality sector, therefore prime prospects for our client. Yes, you can network in the days of COVID. 

What’s the fine line….

When you present creative to a client, what’s the fine line between being pompous, and giving your work the consideration and attention it deserves? That’s always a tough one for me. To spend a long time on flowery, pretentious speeches annoys me. So, we tend to go the other way, jumping right into showing the work and “letting it speak for itself.”

The problem is – that’s not always a good idea. Clients may think that the concepts that took us days if not weeks of hard work, were just lucky coincidences, fortunate flukes that happen to sound and look all right because… just because.

We need to find a happy medium. Enough of an introduction to set the tone, review the challenges, remind the client of the goals, retell the competitive scenario. And then, only then, show the goods.

Wait a second!

Wait a second!
Here I’m trying to help, and you make me go through hoops? There’s something wrong with this picture.

That’s how I felt when, after having done a lot of research on available volunteering opportunities near me, I narrowed them down and started the application process. Not fun. The forms were so long, the questions, so deep and probing and covering so many years and requiring so many dates, that I felt I was applying for super fancy coveted jobs in corporate America.

First gripe – let me see the entire application before I have to fill it out. If it’s going to be six pages long and will ask questions that I consider have no rhyme or reason vis-à-vis a volunteer’s job, I want a chance to see that before I do all that work. Second gripe – as much as I understand that an organization wants to make sure of the caliber and the morals of their volunteers, they also could cut us some slack. I cannot believe the application for a volunteer position would basically be the same as the one for a job seeker. Am I wrong, just being lazy or self-righteous? Hmm.

Sanity Check

You could say this is the ultimate Inside/Out maneuver – do you understand so intimately and well what your company does, how and why, that you could explain it to a kid, and get him or her excited?

Try it. It’s wicked hard. Mostly if what your company does is a bit floaty, vague, and tough to put into the words that would make sense to a young child. Like advertising… marketing… PR…

But why to a young child anyway? Our audience is not kids but smart grownups, right?

Yes. But they are busy and distracted; they have a lot on their mind and are using a tiny portion of their available brainpower to listen to our message. So we have to make is simple and sticky. Which means we have to understand our mission and our vision; our position and our differentiators so well that we don’t need pompous terms or business jargon to answer the scary question coming out of a kid’s mouth – “What do you do? “

Five sure ways to take full advantage of an application story.

Great! You or your PR team interviewed your customer, or your customer’s customers, developed a great application story and had it picked up by a trade pub. Now what?

We’ll tell you what we do at Inside Out for our clients.

First of all, we make sure we have permission from the people we’ve interviewed to re-use their statements and comments in other ways than the originally planned ones. We give them examples of what we’re thinking of doing; if possible, we show them other stories that we have already “stretched out”. And then, we go for it!

  1. We shorten and edit, and it becomes a snappy, to-the-point FaceBook entry.
  2. We re-write as needed to turn it into a script for a quick video that can be posted on our client’s FaceBook page, or on their website.
  3. In many cases, we pick up some of the best comments to be used as headlines for our client’s next print or electronic ad campaign. They have a freshness to them that’s very hard to replicate.
  4. We also often combine case studies about the same product or service, or about the same company, to create a solid testimonial piece.
  5. And it goes without saying… we post the original story to our client’s LinkedIn page.

The point is, we never waste good, original content. There’s always another way to make it work.
Ask us!

Trade shows Do’s and Don’ts

Trade shows are not cheap. Besides the fees you pay to secure your place, there’s the booth, the graphics and all the accessories; the giveaways; the airline tickets, hotel and meals for your team, and of course, the time they are not spending doing their regular jobs. So of course, you want to make sure you do everything in your hands to get your money back. These are some of our favorite, basic trade show Do’s and Don’ts to keep in mind during the show. But we have Do’s and Don’ts for before, and for after, too…

Tradeshow tips

“AND HOW DO YOU LIKE THE CREATIVE STRATEGY?”

WHAT EXPERTS SAY

Tomas M. Hult, Jeannette A. Mena, O. C. Ferrell, Linda Ferrell and others say,
if a stakeholder was not asked for input at the development stage, it’s easy to guess what their opinion will be when the project is ready to launch.

By definition a stakeholder has a personal interest on the matter, therefore a stakeholder’s input is relevant – whether you agree with it or it drives you crazy. And who are the stakeholders? You may have to do some digging. Depending on factors such as the type and size of the company, the visibility and importance of the project, and the market, stakeholders can range from staff, family members, clients, prospects and suppliers to competition, media, regulatory agencies and government officials. But one thing’s for sure:

CONCLUSION

A project can screech to a halt as the next-in-line, but never-before-seen nephew of the CEO is called in to cast the tiebreaking vote. Ouch. That’s why we believe that in order to develop the best strategy and creative, the team should have timely access to the stakeholders and experts who will be asked to approve the final product.

In summary, at Inside Out Communications, we try to get input from the same panel that gives the go-ahead.

https://www.iocomm.com/and-how-do-you-like-the-creative-strategy/

The “Two out of three” rule.

Throughout our 30 years in the business, it has been a good way for us to decide whether an account was right for us or not – the “Two out of three” rule. Meaning?

Basically, and I understand that I’m talking from a privileged point of view, there are three major reasons for sticking to your job; you’re making good money; you’re proud of the work you do; you get appreciation. Well, at Inside Out we say that we need at least two out of those three. Some examples…

We have a pro bono account for which we’re paid nothing but expenses; we feel good about supporting their cause with smart creative, and they show us gratitude. That’s two out of three. On the other hand, there’s an account for which we’re paid well; squeezing appreciation out of them is like milking a rock; the work we do for them makes us look good. Two out of three.

I don’t see settling for one out of three. So far the rule has worked.