When I attended York University, I joined AMA@York. It’s a student chapter affiliated with American Marketing Association. We hosted many events and invited industry leaders to discuss career paths, marketing and entreprenuership. That was one of the best things about the organization because you had the opportunity to hear first hand from people who’ve done it before and been through it all.
One of the speakers we had was Stefan Danis, he is a CEO of Mandrake. One of things from his presentation that resonated with me until this day is the idea of ‘Board of Advisors’ aka ‘Circle of Trust’ or a ‘Mastermind Group’. I can’t find my notes or any material from that session (it was back in 2004 or 2005) for me to reference directly, but from what I remember is that your ’Board of Advisors’ is exactly what it sounds like. It is a circle of friends, colleagues, and mentors; basically, anyone who you trust to give you valuable insight and opinion on almost anything and everything related to you. Your ‘Board of Advisors’ advises you on your career paths, entrepreneurial ventures, decisions, sometimes even relationships, and all of the time the board is there to serve as a dose of reality check. You may even have the ’Board of Advisors’ and not be aware of it. These are the people you can easily go to for any type of advice.
Some people make an effort to meet with the whole board at least once a month, whereas I tend to seek advice ad hoc. My board of advisors consists of people who are either my age or much older, experienced I should say; and come from different backgrounds and industries. For example, if I need advice that is related to money, investing or economy I can always turn to my brother (even though he is younger than me, but he excels in that area) and my friend Alan. Entrepreneurship and marketing, I can always count on advice from Andrew Kinnear, and Olga Coman. For career related decisions I go to one of my former managers. For real estate, mortgages and financing I turn to Peter Moghtader and Danielle Del Castilho. And there are a handful of other close friends (you know who you are because you always get a call or an email from me every time I get a idea), and mentors who advise me on subjects above and more.
Now that I think about it, I have quiet a few people on my board. A friend in automotive business, a friend in a fitness industry, and a friend who quit his day time job and became a restaurateur… and the list goes on.
Cutting costs these days? Stop paying thousands a month to someone for sending you an email with links to articles and blogs that discuss your brand, competition and industry related news. That’s something you can do yourself, save thousands and get instant updates. There’s an abundance of free tools available for you to monitor media sources, the web, and social networks. Although you may not get the full analytical breakdown of how many times the word ‘layoff’ appeared in Twitter between 2pm and 3pm (like Radian6 offers), but these few tools are a great start.
Google Alerts. Get email alerts for relevant Google search results.
Monitter. Monitor Twitter and what tweeple are saying about a set of three keywords… in realtime.
Twitscoop. Quickly and easily see hot topics on twitter via tag cloud.
Yahoo Pipes. Interactive RSS feeds manipulator. Provides graphical interface for you to manage and take greater control of your RSS feeds.
The following technique applies to all sources below.
First and foremost get yourself a Google Reader (or another RSS feed aggregator) account. If you already have a Gmail account then you’re all setup. You’ll need this in order to efficiently and effectively follow what various media outlets online entities are reporting via RSS feeds. The sources below allow you to generate your own RSS feeds that you can subscribe to.
- Visit the site listed.
- Enter the term you want to monitor (it could be anything from your brand name to mundane objects such as margarine) into the search.
- When the search results appear find the RSS feed link and subscribe to it.
- Use your RSS aggregator to monitor the feeds.
Google News
Technorati
Digg
Delicious
Although there are hundreds if not thousands of sites that do the same thing, but these are the leaders in their respective space.
John Wanamaker once said:
“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”
In new Al Gore’s $300 Million climate awareness advertising and media campaign we finally get an answer to that Mr. Wanamaker’s statement. Both halves are wasted.
On April 1st 2008 Al Gore announced 300 Million Dollar consumer advocacy and advertising spanning for 3 years that will create awareness and educate the public about the effects of Global Warming and Climate Change.
I personally do care about the environment, and the issues we’re facing are clearly evident and are not being ignored, but this ad campaign must the biggest waste of advertising and marketing dollars. The $300,000,000 can be more wisely spent.
First and foremost, there is no guarantee that this will have any major impact on the general public. The public already ignores most of the ads. Second issue is the fact that this campaign will run only for 3 years. In order to have a meaningful impact and curb the environmental issues we’re facing today the project must last indefinitely.
If Mr. Gore is aspiring to be a leader in promoting issues associated with climate change, I think he’d be more effective if he led by example. Instead of burning through $300 Mil, the money could be spent more wisely on projects that would have lasting effects and higher ROI.
Try these:
• Build a solar farm
• Build a wind farm
• Clean up the lakes
• Invest into renewable energy research
• Provide tax rebates to homeowners that use alternative/renewable energy source
• Provide tax rebates to businesses that use alternative/renewable energy source
…this list can go on and on.
