Mike

It takes a certain confidence to be an entrepreneur. You’re brute-forcing something into the world that didn’t exist, in the face of indifference, cynicism, or even opposition. Not for the faint of heart.

The hardest part of a startup for me is that transition from where you have an inner circle of people excited about your idea, to where you connect with the real opportunity – what some call the point of “Product/Market Fit.” In that valley you’re trying to balance the conviction required to will something into existence with the need for openness and flexibility in “corrupting” your vision with feedback from the actual marketplace. Tricky stuff.

Working closely with a couple of serially successful entrepreneurs over the last few weeks, I’ve observed a pattern in their behavior. To a man, they are more concerned with getting rich than they are with being right.

We all have baggage. Among mine is that I like to be right. I really like to be right. And I’m right a lot. Which is nice.

Except when I’m not. And I’ve been wrong about some biggies in my swings at the plate.

Great entrepreneurs don’t care about being right… at least about whether they were right when they decided whatever they decided last week, or last month, or last year. They defend those choices in the manner of good dinner conversation… strong opinions, weakly held. Their focus is on doing what it takes now to give their businesses the best possible chance of success. I think there’s something in that for the rest of us.

I’m reading a book right now called The Power of Now, by an author Jeff Bussgang recommended in a recent blog post, Eckhart Tolle. One of the ideas that’s really stuck to me is that the past and the future are just “illusions of the mind.” They are fabrications, not real, and not worth concerning ourselves with. There is only now… only the moment we are in, and the choice of what we think, feel, or do in this moment.

It’s good advice in life, especially for entrepreneurs.

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Introduces Best of Boston iPhone App

Boston, MA (August 2010) – With the introduction of its innovative Best of Boston iPhone app for Boston magazine comes the formal launch of Holland-Mark’s Venture Branding practice. Led by agency principal Mike Troiano, the Venture Branding unit will focus on identifying, developing, and launching new consumer brands and product ideas with partners. “As an agency we are very focused on having measurable impact and seeing the tangible fruits of our creativity,” shares Troiano. “We created the Venture Branding practice to be able to put some skin in the game, to realize some of our own innovative ideas, and simply to work with smart people who want to build something with us.”

The Venture Branding model provides two entry points: The agency offers its ideas to partners and together they go to market, or partners approach the agency with their ideas and Holland-Mark provides the support. The Best of Boston iPhone app is an example of the former, with Holland-Mark executives proposing the idea to Boston magazine’s leadership in March 2010. Holland-Mark developed the software and interface and licenses the content from Boston magazine. With the early success of the Best of Boston app, the Venture Branding team has already begun working on the Best of Philadelphia offering, another property of Boston magazine publisher Metrocorp. The second Venture Branding partnership type is reflected in the agency’s work with Chris Lohring, CEO and owner of Notch Session Ales. “Chris came to us in the fall of 2009 with an interesting idea for a new category of ale,” said Troiano. “We worked with him on everything, from the recipe and name to the distribution strategy. The Notch brand launched in May. We went from an informal conversation to barrels going out the door in six months. That’s pretty cool.”

“Holland-Mark and the Venture Branding practice brings it all together,” said Chris Lohring, Notch CEO. “Strategic sensibility, real marketing expertise, creative horsepower, and a focus on delivering a brand and business model that works. As a one-person start-up it would have taken me another year to get where we got in six months. And the demand for Notch is incredible.”

Holland-Mark is in talks with several potential Venture Branding partners and plans for a portfolio of five to ten brands by the end of 2011.

****

Holland-Mark is a strategic marketing firm focused on creating imperative brands. Clients include ACIS, BodyScapes, Boston magazine, Chelsea Clock, Corning, Harvard, Himmel Hospitality Group, IHRSA, MassMutual, Mercer, Notch Brewing, Pearson Education, and World Energy.

Working with our friends at Boston magazine, we developed an iPhone application that allows consumers to search and access content from the magazine’s highly regarded annual Best of Boston® issues. Best of Boston® is the go-to resource for the expert-selected winners in over 70 categories, from suits to sushi.

Through the app, you can access Best of Boston® winners from the last five years, searching by location, keyword, and category. You can even share what you find and save your favorites.

It simply and effectively gets you what you want: the best from the people that know what’s best. Whether you’re a tourist or a local, it’s ideal for navigating Boston.

We developed the app as part of our newly formed Venture Branding practice, spearheaded by partner Mike Troiano. The Venture Branding model has two facets: we have great ideas and take them to market or others have great ideas and we help take them to market.

Our work with Boston magazine on the Best of Boston® iPhone app is an example of the former; our work with Chris Lohring on the creation of Notch Session Ales, an example of the latter. Whichever way it works, we get to play with smart people and create viable brands and businesses. What could be better?

If you want to check out the Best of Boston® iPhone app (just in time for the weekend), click here. And let us know what you think.

Among the implications, is that to do great work, you need great clients.

So what makes a great client? Here’s my list of client attributes that help me to do my best work…

1. A single decision-maker, empowered with final decision-making authority
2. A personal relationship, with trust and respect in both directions
3. A focus on clear articulation of the problem and/or business objective
4. The courage to face the truth and deal with it
5. Crisp and direct feedback, whether positive or negative
6. On-time payment
7. The sincere belief that marketing is important
8. A personal experience where great marketing changed the game
9. A sense of humor
10. High standards and expectations

What’s on your list?

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Among the key themes of the panel was that, as far as these reporter/bloggers were concerned, PR agencies aren’t worth much. In a roomful of PR folks, you can imagine what happened next. As John Wall of Ronin Marketer described:

There was one question from the crowd asking why PR firms were not represented. David said it was because they wanted a panel of first person accounts from the reporters. I think a key point on whether or not you need a PR firm is your ability to tell your story effectively. You either want a PR firm that has existing relationships with the specific publications or channels you need to get into, or to help you craft your message if you are not a passionate and effective storyteller.

That question was asked by Bobbie Carlton, and she was first out today with her thoughts:

A lot of the statements from the panel this evening came straight out of a time warp. A time warp where press releases are written for the media, where PR = media relations, and all a PR person is good for is writing said press releases and carefully “managing” media relationships.

There was a lot of great information served up in the panel but if I was an entrepreneur, all I would have heard was, “Run away from PR people, they are useless to you. In fact, probably worse than useless because top reporters look down on them as a breed.”

Lora Kratchounova posted a pretty balanced summary of the panel’s advice, including:

Best way to get journalists’ attention? Seek and get a personal referral — otherwise whether you do it or your agency does it for you, your pitch will go unnoticed. Then try and meet these journalists in person and tell them your story. Got the impression that journalists are looking for the raw material, that more often than not, they avoid media-trained people. Because they are after the juicy details, the things people don’t tell you — so the more authentic, first-hand info they can get, the better the chance that they will listen to your story.

Chuck Tanowitz posted a thoughtful critique, climaxing in this juicy anecdote:

After the panel, as I approached Wade Roush, I found myself in a very interesting conversation with one of the panel’s targets: a bootstrapped entrepreneur whose company is targeting application developers. He had a few questions of Wade that frankly were out of Wade’s range. The entrepreneur wanted to know how to talk with specific application development message boards and what impact news and information presented there would have on gaining coverage from Xconomy. He and I then had a nice conversation about communications strategy leading up to his launch. We agreed that getting coverage in the Globe, for example, wouldn’t help him reach his audience, but later may be useful in reaching potential investors, a move that affects his communications strategy. We also talked about his need for a “community manager” who would focus on working with the various application development forums.

And that leads to my main problem with the panel: they preached the misguided notion that PR is only media relations.

Look folks… It’s a fair comment to say the contrarian view should have been represented. And if PR agencies really didn’t add value, they’d be in worse shape than most of them are now.

For the record, as I stated in a comment to Bobbie’s post:

…the reason neither David nor I thought to include a PR person was that the panel’s subject was “An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Bootstrapping PR.” I’ve never seen a PR shop that would get out of bed for less that $4K/month, so the vast majority are off topic.

As for the individual practitioners who’ve broken with the old PR practices – people focused on networking and relationship building, on adding real value… there are a few out there, but in defense of the panel I would say those folks are the exception, and not the rule. Given that, the fact is most entrepreneurs who require coaching on the skills you describe are ill-equipped to distinguish the shamans from the shysters, so going it alone in the beginning does seem pretty good advice.

This isn’t really about PR at all, it’s about the whole broken marketing services model. I believe that social marketing / influence marketing / content marketing / inbound marketing / whatever-you-want-to-call-it marketing is going to take a big bite out of conventional marketing in the coming years, and that it’s already replaced conventional marketing for the kinds of businesses we were talking to last night. The marketing pros who want a seat at that table need to earn it by adding value, in the form of relationships, real-world experience, and the development of content that serves the interests of BOTH commercial entities and their target audiences.

I think what our audience heard last night is that the people who can do that are needed now more than ever. The problem with most PR firms is that their underlying economics are driven by a leverage model that surrounds a handful of the above folks with an army of earnest, underpaid young faces. In that sense the PR firm model is not something that serves the interests of entrepreneurs. In fact it’s something I think is destined for the history books.

We’re intimately familiar with this challenge at Holland-Mark, and are struggling with it ourselves. Is the “junior staff leverage” model really dead, and if so, what business model will support the next generation of great marketing services firms? The truth is I don’t know. But it seems to me that’s the conversation worth having among the “PR” digerati… not the semantic argument about what PR is or isn’t, but how, in the end, the people delivering it will build a sustainable and productive business.

I’ll post the video here when it’s available, please subscribe if you don’t want to miss it. In the meantime, I welcome your thoughts – both on the question above, and on whether last night’s panel was fair or not.

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