Archive for the 'General' Category

Ad Agency Insights

Published by Adam Foldenauer on November 2, 2009 in General. 0 Comments

John B. Adams, CEO of The Martin Agency, spoke at a recent business school breakfast. He shared some powerful insights on new realities for marketers. Here are three themes:

1. Integrated marketing must evolve into unified marketing. At first, this sounded like merely a fresher buzzword, but the point is that agency functions should become more collaborative, just as marketing messages are blending more closely with the media that contain them.

2. All advertising is becoming direct-response advertising. Consumers are researching and making decisions in less predictable processes, due in large part to interactive media. For example, a consumer may consult friends’ opinions, and several user-generated reviews online. He may be ready to make a purchase decision before engaging with a single ad. This means that image advertising is less valued, and every marketing communication needs a behavior-changing call to action.

3. The nature of storytelling is changing – from a single story for a brand to multiple stories.

My overall takeaway: Interactive media gives consumers abundant choice for how they consume marketing communications, and for how they select products and services. It’s all done on the consumers’ terms.

The challenge for marketers – or any provider of a product or service – is to gain deep insight into the target consumer, offer truly helpful, relevant products, and tell compelling, helpful stories that amplify the product.

Wait a second…shouldn’t that have been the challenge all along?

Guest column on the benefits of operating a business near great business schools

Published by Richard Coughlan on October 20, 2009 in General. 0 Comments

I have heard from more than a dozen business leaders and many of our alumni since my guest column on businesses partnering with business schools was published at RichmondBizSense.com last Friday.  A number of individuals have encouraged me to post the link here so that our MBA students and prospective students might have a chance to view it.

The link to BizSense is here: http://bit.ly/3CXFZP

I welcome your comments.

Women’s MBA Association Hosts New Female MBA Students

Published by Meg Standing on August 22, 2009 in Student Experience, Professional Development and General. 0 Comments

On Tuesday, August 11th, the Women’s MBA Association hosted an enjoyable networking evening for the incoming female MBA students at my house. About 25 current and incoming female MBA students, as well as a few recent graduates, came to meet the new students, share their experiences in the program, and have an opportunity to network with one another. Although the group is only about eight months old, participation in our events continues to grow and we look forward to making this welcoming event a tradition!

The Robins School of Business Women’s MBA Association was started last winter after a lot of discussion around the challenges that women face in the workplace and how to best support and educate one another as students and alumni of the MBA program. We understand the power of learning from one other’s triumphs and mistakes and the benefit of having strong, intelligent female mentors to look up to in the business community. The mission of the Women’s MBA Association is to be a resource for female MBA students and alumni; we will serve as a forum to empower one another and address issues facing women business leaders through networking, speaker series and mentoring. We will accomplish our mission though quarterly speaker series on a variety of topics, dedicated social and networking events, as well as school-sponsored recruiting events for potential students. Our next event, a speaker series on “Changing Careers” will take place on Sunday, September 13th from 2-4pm. Our speaker series are open to all current female MBA students and alumni, prospective MBA students, female faculty and staff, and other invited guests from the community. Please contact me for more information: meg.standing@richmond.edu.

Mine - Time Inc. Tests a Personalized Magazine

Published by Adam Foldenauer on May 3, 2009 in General. 2 Comments

Considering the struggles of the nation’s daily newspapers, it’s worthwhile to highlight any print publication making strides toward providing a personalized product.  Mine, a venture from Time Inc., promises to be “my magazine, my way.” Consumers create an account online and select five magazines from Time’s stable of publications, and Mine becomes five magazines in one – the best of content from all of your favorite subjects, delivered to you each month.  

And, it’s free for five test issues. Sounds revolutionary, right?  

Not so fast. I recently received my first issue, and it didn’t live up to my expectations. After perusing it, I’m unclear if Time’s endgame is to get me to subscribe to Mine, or to the publications from which I selected content. The publication reads more like a teaser or sampler. The content is light and quick, with only an article or two from each publication I selected. There’s no depth or flow to draw me in like a good magazine does; in fact, Mine is only 35 pages. There is little compelling photography. 

It’s more likely that the purpose of Mine is to provide advertisers a platform to deliver personalized ad content. Mine is peppered with personalized advertising from Lexus, the issue’s sponsor. For example, the ad copy tells me that “Adam Foldenauer, when you’re driving from Midlothian to Virginia Beach, you can use more cargo space…” Seeing my name is 50-point ad copy grabbed my attention, but it struck me as gimmicky.

And here’s another gripe: Shortly after I received my first issue, I received an email apologizing that my first Mine may be inaccurate due to a technology glitch. No one said mass customization was without its challenges. And they were right about the mixup: I signed up for Sports Illustrated, but there were no sports. Instead, I got an article from InStyle about how to buy the perfect jeans (which my wife, Christy, enjoyed).  

If you have a variety of compelling content like Time Inc. does, this concept could work nicely with some retooling. Assuming Time has developed a cost-effective short-run printing solution, Mine should offer more customization within topics, and then actually deliver engaging content. Here’s an exaggerated example: Allow me to build a magazine that has only SI’s NBA coverage, Golf Magazine’s tips on short game improvement, any Travel & Leisure piece on Hawaii, and any Food & Wine article on grilling recipes.  

And as for the ads, how about matching products and services with my preferences and interests that I disclosed when I signed up? 

Now that sounds like a mass-customized magazine consumers would make theirs. 

Sign up for Mine here - looks like only the online version is available now.

Counterfactuals and Coming in Third

Published by Richard Coughlan on March 6, 2009 in General. 0 Comments

Fifteen years ago, during a graduate school course on decision-making, I read a fascinating study by Victoria Medvec (now at Northwestern’s Kellogg School) on counterfactual thinking.  Medvec and her co-authors (including Tom Gilovich) found that bronze medalists at the 1992 Olympic Games were actually happier than silver medalists.  Why would this be?

I’ve written before on this blog about reference points, which provide the answer to this intriguing question.  The silver medalists are more likely to imagine how they might have won gold.  The bronze medalists are more likely to think about what it might have been like to leave the Olympics without a medal.  Each has engaged in counterfactual thinking by imagining an outcome that is contrary to what actually occurred.  But, because the silver medalists create an “upward” counterfactual, their satisfaction with their own outcome is reduced, while the bronze medalists’ “downward” counterfactual raises satisfaction with their own outcome.

This kind of cognitive behavior also occurs in situations where we choose one option over another and can occasionally lead to regret years later.  Many of us consider questions like, “What if I’d chosen a different job or a different MBA program many years ago?  How might my life and career have been different?” 

If we manufacture rather rosy counterfactual outcomes through this psychological process — and many of us are wired to do just that — we’ll experience some negative affect.  It could be disappointment, guilt, regret or sadness, all of which are being investigated by social psychologists.

I began thinking about this topic again recently after several conversations with successful and unsuccesful entrepreneurs.  Many of them wove counterfactuals into their stories of how their business fared in its earliest months and years.  It strikes me that counterfactual thinking among entrepreneurs might be a rich area for future research.

By the way, Neal Roese published a nice, if not widely-read, text a few years ago entitled If Only.  It does a nice job of bringing research on counterfactuals to a lay audience.  I suspect the book is still available via Amazon.  Have a look and send me a note about other potential applications of counterfactual thinking in the realm of commerce.