How Placemaking Works from Authenticity

I love the free time I seem to have this week, although I look out the window and see the first part of nine inches of show that's due to come down before 6PM....

Anyway back to the subject at hand...

The book continues using The American Girl stores as the shining example of products that are true to themselves in terms of Authenticity(ie offering a place where the product can be experienced-where the average stay is over 4 hours(!) and customers spend over $100 per visit), while trashing the Walt Disney and Warner Brothers store model-static stores with no real experiencial element. The trashing occurs because as stagers of experiences elsewhere(in their theme parks, in movies, etc), they should know better, and therefore the stores are detracting from their brands-which probably accounts for their relative disappearance in the last 10 years.

A quote in the book from Peter Drucker really caught my attention: "The aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous". Wow. Reminds me of something I was thinking about regarding godd direct mail pieces- that should be able to hand it them and not open your mouth, and they would know why the event was important, why they needed to go and why they needed to take action now and how to register". Reminds me also of Stephen Pia's quote to me in one of my SISO articles: "it's not selling, it's helping people buy".

The author's carry on with the concept that "placemaking makes advertising superfluous". Wow advertising companies are in trouble if this catches on.....

Happy New Year to all....

From marketing to placemaking: my odyssey in the book Authenticity continues

I said in the post before last that I was going to continue on my path in the book Authenticity, and that I was slothful in not keeping up. Well here we go!

In the work I have been doing for clients recently the idea of Inbound Marketing(versus the usual 'push' outbound email and direct mail marketing which is becoming less and less profitable) has intrigued me to the point where I attended a webcast by Hubspot about "How to Combine SEO, Blogging, and Social Media for Results". So in picking up Authenticity again, we are greeted with the concept of Buzz Marketing, 'where the marketer is invisible'.

This is interesting in itself, but not for the reasons I mentioned. Buzz marketing without authenticity is a 'buzz kill' if it sets up expectations that are not fulfilled, and is the primary problem with advertising, that is "a phoniness generating machine". Wouldn't we love to actually fly somewhere in the way American Airlines(or anyone else) advertises the experience to be like(as a sidebar, I had a surprisingly unsatisfactory experience with Virgin Airlines coming back to Boston from London last month, topped by a REALLY unsatisfying flight on American, but we'll leave that for now. The authors point out(and this is the main premise of the chapter) that 'companies need....is a new approach to demand creation that actually enables-make that forces- a company to be what it says it is(authors' italics) and that discipline is called 'placemaking'. This proscribes to be whatever the experience you created is the marketing(which until November is how I looked at Virgin Atlantic).

I look forward to continuing this path, but for now I need to go into a conference call so I will come back to this shortly....

Post Xmas week

I both and love the week after Christmas. Love it because you seem to have alot of extra time to get to those things that you've put off. Hate it because noone else is around and if your work counts on others then you are dangling....plus who wants to work when no-one else is?

Since I parted from the corporate world, I have had to learn the discipline of working at a home office when there are a myriad of distractions and then there's the internet.....I've got that hard coded now, but it seems extra difficult these two weeks....


I got the chance to see my new 19 week old nephew in Westchester this weekend. Reminds me of all the care it takes to raise a baby and how much was showered on me. Makes me grateful when other things aren't so great. On my Westchester trip I got the chance to 'rescue' a Junior's chocolate swirl cheesecake(or as I call it a 'cheese pie') from Grand Central Station, easily the best cheesecake I've ever had.

Now's the time to think about resolutions as well. There's the usual, like losing a few pounds or bieng a bit more tidy(perhaps a maid service and doing more walking). I need something bigger though so stay tuned.....

The Politics of Dancing

Last Friday was my birthday, a good time to look back on the past year and see what progress I've made. What can I say?

• I've had a number of happy customers this year, despite the economy;
• I've written over twenty SISO articles about the events business, and like this blog I actually have quite a few readers(so I'm told);
• I haven't finished Authenticity, which is embarassing, given the book is now over a year old;
• I've met a number of my 'competitors' and look forward to working with some/all of them in 2009;
• I learned about 'inbound' marketing- the idea of not just blasting outbound marketing to get customers, to reach into the 'dark corners' to build long term sustainable attendance over the long haul;
• I'm worried that if someone can throw their shoes at the President we need new Secret Service training for the guys who are protecting the President.

Other than that, I have a feeling that I'll really need to roll up my sleeves as The Event Mechanic! next year, which I'll enjoy since this year I learned how REALLY roll up my sleeves.

Good luck to you in the meantime and hope to see you in the trenches!

Beyond buy-sell in exhibitions

I had a superb interview for the SISO column with with Peter Eelman, the VP of Exhibitions for the Association for Manufacturing Technology last week on the subject of 'beyond the buy sell equation' in events. You would imagine that an association in manufacturing might be 'pulling in their horns' given the what's happening to GM, Ford and Chrysler in Detroit. Far from it.

Peter has the fortune of having the backing and urging of a very innovative group of folks at the association who gives him a fertile opportunity to keep producing areas of creativity. Why does he do this? Because as he says "in times where sales are down, people still need to know what going to happen in the next three, five or ten years, so we've provided a forum for that in addition to a massive tradeshow where business is done". Just another way the event is a must attend, even in bad times.

Looking forward to writing the full article which will be available on my resource page soon.

Just another way that a really good event stays vibrant in tough times. What are you doing to keep your head above water?