ShannyShannyAuthor Archives: Shanny Morgenstern
About Shanny Morgenstern
Blogs I read:
http://karenmariemoning.blogspot.com/, http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/, http://www.morningstarcomm.com/2011/
Favorite websites:
http://www.thomaslfriedman.com/, http://www.kcchamber.com/News/Chamber-Newsletters/Business-Intelligence-Brief.aspx, http://www.nytimes.com/, http://www.edf.org/, http://www.elbowchocolates.com/
Favorite word:
Tzedakah – it’s the Hebrew word that refers to the obligation to give charity as well as performing acts to repair the world. The root of the word is righteousness.
The first section I read of the newspaper: Front page
What other profession would you like to attempt?: Graphic designer, lawyer
Guilty pleasure: Romance books and chocolate
Is Pepsi okay?:
No, if Pepsi is the only drink available, I’ll just wait until Diet Coke, or tea or coffee or water is available. ← Older postsOh, the Places You’ll Go!
Posted in Best Practices, Executive Insights
Congratulations!
Today is your day.
You’re off to Great Places!
You’re off and away!
You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself
any direction you choose.
You’re on your own. And you know what you know.
And YOU are the guy who’ll decide where to go.
Oh, The Places You’ll Go! by Dr. Seuss is the ultimate graduation story. It encapsulates both the joy and the terror regarding graduation, from the parent’s point of view.
One of my best friends has two children who are graduating this year. What is ironic is how different the two celebrations are. Her youngest son is graduating from high school, and they are celebrating in a big way. His grandparents are coming in town for the ceremony. My friend and her husband are hosting a party and inviting all of her son’s friends and many of their own friends to come celebrate with them. They ordered special decorations and a custom cake to commemorate the occasion.
Her daughter is getting her Master’s degree. To celebrate, my friend invited a few family members for dinner. Her daughter didn’t even attend the graduation ceremony.
What is particularly ironic is that virtually all of the kids in our community graduate high school, but it is truly an exceptional accomplishment to earn a Master’s degree. And then it hit me; graduation celebrations are not about celebrating accomplishments, as much as they are about motivating children for the future. The hope is that we, as parents, can still motivate our high school graduates to do well in the future. The graduation celebration reinforces the idea that if the young man steers himself in the right direction, he will be rewarded for his efforts. A parent may (or may not) be able to influence an 18-year-old to behave according to certain standards, but by the time someone has earned a Master’s degree, it’s clear that he or she is internally motivated to succeed.
In Great By Choice, Jim Collins suggests that unsuccessful parents and bosses have one thing in common—demotivation. I recently attended a conference for senior Public Relations Counselors and David Baker reinforced this concept when he said, “Quit trying to motivate employees–it cannot be done. Motivation is an internal force. You can, however, demotivate them. If you’re doing that, stop.”
According to Collins there are three main ways for managers to demotivate employees:
- Hype – failing to acknowledge the real difficulties the organization faces.
- Futurism – being obsessed with distant goals or visions without keeping an eye on the present.
- False Democracy – inviting employees’ input when the leader has already made a decision.
One of the best articles I saw about how to demotivate your staff is by Wayne Mates. He suggests five factors:
- Set unrealistic expectations
- Waste their time
- Create constant fire drills
- Treat them as expendable resources
- Don’t share the wealth
On the other hand, celebrating our employee’s successes may not be a true motivator, but it certainly makes for a better work environment.
And in honor of my friend’s daughter, Mazel Tov! You should be proud of your accomplishments.
I know I am.
One Billion Dollars
Posted in Executive Insights, Social MediaIn Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, Dr. Evil threatened to hold the world ransom for… $1 million. Because Dr. Evil was thinking in terms of 1960s economics, he thought he was asking for a huge amount of money.
Today, it’s not $1 million, it’s one billion. Yesterday, there were three large transactions in the communications field — each worth about $1 billion. Cerberus bought a majority stake in AT&T’s Yellow Pages business, Microsoft bought 800 patents from AOL, and Facebook purchased Instagram.
On the surface it appears as if each of these transactions was over-valued, especially to those of us who weathered the 2001 Telecom crisis. However, if you dig deeper you can see the logic behind each deal. Daniel Gross with the Contrary Indicator wrote a great analysis about why these deals made sense.
Cerberus is a private equity firm. Their primary focus is on making cash now, not for the long-term. And as hard as it is to believe in today’s world, there are still people who rely on the Yellow Pages as their primary source of information when they are considering making a purchase. In 2011 AT&T’s Yellow Pages had EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) of about $ 1 billion.
Microsoft has accumulated quite a bit of cash from its legacy business – to the tune of $19 billion dollars, and more is flowing into the company on a daily basis. Most likely the move to buy the patents is defensive. Microsoft may use the patents to further its own business, but their primary value is keeping the patents out of their competitors hands.
Daniel Gross called Facebook’s purchase of Instagram a “bolt of youthful exhuberance.” In Barbara Ortutay’s article she quoted Webush analyst Michael Pachter. He said buying Instagram, not only eliminates a rival but gives Facebook technology that is gaining traction. Facebook believes that it can turn the 30 million users of Instagram into revenues and profits. In fact, it’s not quite right to say that Facebook paid $1 billion for Instagram, because a significant portion of the transaction is in Facebook stock, which doesn’t even trade yet.
So are these deals overvalued? To me it feels a lot like it did in 2001, just before the first technology bubble broke, but I’d like to think that we have learned from our mistakes the last 11 years. Perhaps, in the not-too-distant future we will all laugh about how small $1 billion dollars is.
Tagged AOL, AT&T, Barbara Ortutay, Daniel Gross, Facebook, Instagram, Michael Pachter, Microsoft, Morningstar Communications, Shanny Morgenstern, Yellow Pages | Leave a comment April 10, 2012Your Favorite Store
Posted in Best Practices, Executive Insights, Integrated Marketing (IMC)One of the cornerstone principles at Morningstar Communications is Think Excellence, Not Difference(TEND). In fact, here is an article that Eric published in 2004. The TEND philosophy is based on the fact that consumers don’t make their buying decisions because of a Unique Selling Proposition – consumers decide what to buy based on who they believe will satisfy their needs the best. As marketers our job is to determine how our clients and customers define excellence, figure out a way to provide it and then communicate our message of excellence in a proactive and integrated way.
United Parcel Service’s ‘What Can Brown Do For You?” is an excellent example of putting the TEND philosophy into action. All State has been using the “You’re in Good Hands” slogan for more than 60 years. And the latest proponent of the TEND philosophy is jcpenney.
My sister-in-law, is an assortment planner for the top-selling Worthington line at jcpenney. She sent me their new catalog to get my reaction and I am honestly blown away by how well it was done. The look is clean, and bright and exciting without going over the top or being too cheesy. The copy is absolutely terrific. I love how jcpenney has simplified its pricing strategy.
According to Second Wind, “the new brand strategy, is solidly based on consumer research regarding how jcpenney’s middle-class shoppers actually shop. Research revealed that only one in 500 items sold at full price, and 72 percent of revenue came from merchandise sold at 50 percent off or more.”
In her Forbes article about the jcpenney rebranding Sarah Heller wrote, ”It’s refreshing, daring and probably exactly what the retailer needs. It’s probably what a lot of retailers need but few have the leadership and support to do it.”
When Ron Johnson, CEO of J. C. Penney Company, Inc. said “We want customers to shop on their terms, not ours,” he truly was embracing Think Excellence, Not Difference.
Tagged Forbes, JC Penney, jcp, jcpenney, Morningstar Communications, Rebranding, retail, Ron Johnson, Second Wind, Shanny Morgenstern | 1 Comment February 21, 2012The Butterfly Effect
Posted in Best Practices, Executive InsightsIn chaos theory, the butterfly effect is the sensitive dependence on initial conditions; where a small change at one place can result in large differences someplace far away later. Edward Lorenz claimed that a butterfly flapping it’s wings in one part of the world could determine if a hurricane happens in another part of the world.
In my case the butterfly effect started with an earthquake and ended with exceptional customer service.
Last Fall I ordered my dream car – a 2012 Mini Cooper S from Baron Mini Cooper. (His name is Pepi because he has a lot of spice and pep.) Since my car was manufactured to my specifications in England, Tom Seling, my salesperson told me that it would take about eight weeks for my car to arrive. I tracked Pepi’s progress and was pleasantly surprised when he arrived after only four weeks.
I eagerly drove to the dealer to pick up Pepi; went through some basic how-to training and started to drive home. Before I left the parking lot, an error message appeared saying that I needed to drive carefully to the nearest Mini dealer to have my anti-lock braking system (ABS) repaired. At first I figured it was just something the car dealer forgot to reset when they were prepping the car for me, however it actually was defective. Not only that, but the dealership needed to order the part from England and they told me it would be a few days before they could repair my car.
Baron prides itself on their customer service and everyone from my sales person, to the mechanic to the manager were mortified. Apparently this particular problem hasn’t happened to Baron since Baron started selling Mini Coopers in 1999. I was truly disappointed, but they gave me another 2012 Mini Cooper S as a loaner and told me that they would let me know when my car would be repaired.
Here’s where the butterfly effect comes in. There was a world-wide shortage of ABS parts. The manufacturer that Mini Cooper had been using for the ABS was located in Japan and because of the tsunami in March, they were temporarily unable to deliver the parts to Mini Cooper. Mini Cooper found another supplier, but it was inferior quality and many systems failed and needed to be replaced.
In the meantime, Tom kept in contact with me and told me that it might be another six weeks before my car could be fixed – and of course, I could continue to drive the loaner until then.
When my car arrived, only three weeks later, Tom drove Pepi to my house so that we could switch cars. He gave me some Mini gifts AND a check for three months of my lease payments.
The earthquake near Japan, was completely out of Mini Cooper’s control – however what they could control is how they handled it. They turned what could have been an opportunity to lose a customer into a positive experience.
In the end, I am even more impressed with Baron Mini Cooper and I LOVE my car.
Tagged Butterfly Effect, Customer Service, Mini Cooper, Morningstar Communications, Shanny Morgenstern, Tsunami | 1 Comment January 24, 2012Consumer Trends for 2012
Posted in Best Practices, Executive Insights, Integrated Marketing (IMC), Online Marketing, Social MediaA few months ago a friend asked me what business title I would like, if I could have any title. Some people would say President or CEO, but for me, the perfect title would be Chief Knowledge Officer. I would love to spend my days reading the news and researching trends and then determining how to make that knowledge a competitive advantage for our company.
I may not ever be able to devote myself just to gaining knowledge, but exploring trendwatching.com is a small step in the right direction. trendwatching.com scans the globe for emerging consumer trends, insights and innovations. They recently published their 12 Crucial Consumer Trends for 2012. Here is their list:
- Red Carpet – businesses around the world will shower Chinese customers and visitors with even more tailored services and perks, and in general, lavish attention and respect.
- DIY Health – DIY goes ‘good for you’ in 2012: novel apps and devices will increasingly let consumers discreetly track and manage their health by themselves.
- Dealer-chic – For consumers, securing the best deals is fast becoming a way of life, if not a source of pride and status.
- Eco-cycology – Next for recycling? Brands taking back all of their products (and recycling them responsibly and innovatively).
- Cash-less – Why a cashless future is (almost) here, and why it will be about convenience and an entire new eco-system of payments, rewards and offers.
- Bottom of the Urban Pyramid – In 2012, the opportunities to cater to hundreds of millions of low-income urban consumers will be unprecedented.
- Idle Sourcing – Expect crowd-based problem solving to fuel endless innovations in 2012, especially as for consumers, contributing will be more effortless than ever.
- Flawsome – Brands that behave more humanly, including showing their flaws, will be awesome.
- Screen Culture – In 2012, ‘life’ will take place via ever more pervasive, personal, immersive and interactive screens.
- Recommerce – For smart consumers, ‘trading in’ is the new buying in 2012.
- Emerging Maturialism – Why in 2012, experienced, open-minded consumers in traditionally ‘conservative’ emerging markets will embrace campaigns and products that are frank if not risqué.
- Point & Know – 2012 will be about instant visual information gratification.
There are many fabulous examples of how these trends are manifesting themselves on the trendwatching.com site; I’d like to share two here.
A great example of Eco-cycology is Patagonia’s Common Threads Initiative. The initiative encourages people to return items that have reached the end of their life to be recycled into new fiber or fabric. So far Patagonia has reclaimed 45 tons of clothing.
One of the examples of the Cash-less trend is about the company called Square. Square is an electronic payment service that enables users to accept credit card payments using their smart phones. I happened to hear Jim McKelvey, one of the founders of Square, speak at a recent conference for women entrepreneurs. His best advice, “Don’t look for opportunities, look for disruptions.”
Source: www.trendwatching.com. One of the world’s leading trend firms, trendwatching.com sends out its free, monthly Trend Briefings to more than 160,000 subscribers worldwide.
Tagged Global Women's Summit, Morningstar Communications, Patagonia, Shanny Morgenstern, Square, trendwatching.com | Leave a comment December 6, 2011Shifting from Scale to Engagement
Posted in Best Practices, Online Marketing, Social MediaWhen we first started Morningstar Communications I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to measure the effectiveness of a PR campaign. Even fourteen years ago I knew that the number of clips, or column inches of coverage or even the number of listeners or readers wasn’t what truly mattered to our clients. What matters is how we change behavior. Do more people buy our client’s products? Do more people publicly recommend our client’s products to their friends and colleagues?
So it seemed strange to me that when social media started taking off, people measured its effectiveness by how many people saw their messages. It doesn’t matter if you have a million likes on your Facebook page if they completely ignore your posts.
A traditional marketing campaign should engage and attract new customers and so should an effective social media campaign.
As Michael Lazerow, the CEO of Buddy Media said in a recent article in AdAge, Facebook is now focused on helping businesses develop effective social media campaigns – by shifting from scale to engagement. Instead of being limited to the passive like button, businesses will be able to use a variety of expressive verbs such as “read, watch, listen, buy and more.”
On the surface this seems like a small shift, but it truly requires taking an entirely different strategic approach. In Ian Schafer’s article in the Harvard Business Review he talks about how marketing companies need to change their emphasis from nouns – “impressions, commercials, search results, clicks” to “making consumers’ connections to content and activities more meaningful… The dawn of the engagement age and agency is near, and the upcoming Facebook platform changes will only bring it about sooner.”
Tagged Facebook, Ian Schafer, Michael Lazerow, Morningstar Communications, Shanny Morgenstern, social media | 1 Comment September 28, 2011K.I.S.S. – Keep it Simple and Strategic
Posted in Best Practices, Integrated Marketing (IMC)When Word Processors first came out people used a plethora of fonts, simply because they could. Eventually, people realized that excessive complexity actually reduced the effectiveness of their communications.
The same concept applies to graphics. I think the new MyPlate icon the USDA announced yesterday is brilliant.
It is simple and strategic. It uses images that all of us are familiar with. Even young audiences will be able to determine if their diets are conforming to the suggested guidelines. And it conveys an easy to understand and share message – our diets should consist of vegetables, grains, protein, fruits and dairy, in that order. In addition, about half of our plate should be vegetables and fruit and half of our plate should be protein and grains, and don’t skip the dairy.
It is particularly impressive when you compare the new graphic to the old graphic, the food pyramid.
When I see great graphics like MyPlate I envision a bunch of people sitting around a room brainstorming. Someone draws a line drawing on the white board and everyone in the room goes – of course, that’s exactly what we mean to say.
Of course, the hard part is before you can make a great graphic, you have to determine exactly what it is you want to say.
Tagged Design, Graphics, Morningstar Communications, MyPLate, Shanny Morgenstern | 1 Comment June 3, 2011Phone vs. Web … Does it Work for Them
Posted in Best Practices, Integrated Marketing (IMC), Online Marketing
Photo courtesy of National Genealogical Society
I know that I am not so young anymore, but I am not so old either. And yet in my lifetime the way I access information has changed drastically. When I was growing up we went to the library and looked through the card catalog, literally card-by-card to find the books that may or may not address the issue I was researching.
When my eldest son was in 5th grade, the Web was in its infancy. I actually taught his class how to do research online. Can you imagine a group of 11 year-olds today who don’t know how to search the Internet?
Today, there are many companies whose Web sites are secondary to their phone applications. I imagine their staff meeting when someone said, “We have millions of people using our phone application, do you think we should have some of our junior programmers put something together so we have a website as well?”
Here are three examples where the quality and usability of the phone applications far exceed their websites:
- Shazam – their website is almost completely focused on downloading applications for my phone. There isn’t even a link to tag a song on their home page.
- Urban Spoon – their website has a lot of information, but it is overwhelming and what is impressive about their phone application is that it is so simple, easy to use and fun.
- Flixster – their website is also overwhelming, but the key is that it takes me much longer using my laptop than my phone to find out what are the ratings and local showtimes for a specific movie.
The unifying thread for Shazam, Urban Spoon and Flixster is that their creators believed their audiences would prefer to access their products from a phone instead of a laptop or desktop computer. This necessitates adopting the philosophy of less is more and truly identifying the key information.
90% of the time I access Shazam is when I’m sitting at a stop light in my car and a song I like starts playing on the radio. It would be incredibly frustrating and dangerous if I had to scroll through multiple screens to tag a song. Yes, sometimes it’s nice to see the lyrics or know what the top tracks are, but don’t make me sort through that information while I’m sitting at a stop light.
Picture courtesy of Apple Insider
As communicators we need to determine how our audiences want to access our information. If they are using their phones more and more, which I suspect is the trend, then we need to laser our efforts to communicate what our audience considers the most important information, in the most efficient way possible.
And then we will need to adapt to how my future grandchildren will want to access information. I doubt that will be looking through a card catalog at the library…
Tagged Flixster, Morningstar Communications, Phone Applications, Shanny Morgenstern, Shazam, Smartphone, Urban Spoon | 2 Comments April 19, 2011Taking Some of the Hassle out of HTML
HTML is the back-end language of the Web and most e-mail. Here is a sample from our recent newsletter. This is what a small portion of the code looked like:
This is what the final product looked like, at least this is how it looked on my computer:
And therein, lies the rub, or at least part of it. HTML is not like a word processor where the author specifies the exact appearance for the text and the graphics. This newsletter may not look the same on your computer because your screen size and Web browser might be different from mine.
Working with HTML can be frustrating, but here are some tips based on my experience that may keep you from pulling your hair out.
- Don’t expect everything to line up the same on every computer.
- Size your graphics on your computer before you upload them to the Web.
- Graphics should be only 72 dpi – anything more than that just takes longer to load on the page.
- Do NOT format your text in a word processor and then copy it into your e-mail or site management system. You can use a plain text editor, however.
- Do not use spaces or tabs to control spacing.
- Most important of all, test your email or web page on many different computers before you share it with your public.
Please share your tips and tricks for taking some of the hassle out of HTML.
Tagged Design, HTML, Morningstar Communications, Shanny Morgenstern, Web | Leave a comment March 9, 2011Trends for 2011
Posted in Best Practices, Executive Insights, Online MarketingAs 2010 comes to a close, smart marketers are adapting their companies to respond to upcoming market changes.
According to JWTIntelligence there are ten trends that will shape the world in 2011.
- All the World’s a Game – brands will extend online gaming strategies to non-gaming spaces to deepen engagement with consumers.
- The Urgency Economy – more and more brands will offer discounts and special benefits for consumers who act now. trendwatching.com also called this trend Pricing Pandemonium.
- Non-Commitment Culture – consumers are still resistant to making big ticket purchases. Successful brands will offer opportunities to rent or share items. According to trendwatching.com many industries are already addressing the trend for being Owner-Less including textbooks, jewelry, video games and automobiles.
- Eat, Pray, Tech – people are becoming more and more dependent on technology and they are willing to invest in it.
- De-Teching – people want to turn off their technology, at least temporarily, and brands will facilitate creating more human interaction.
- Retail as the Third Space – retailers will emphasize face-to-face interactions, strengthening the experience of buying.
- Creative Urban Renewal – according to Intuit, close to 180,000 people move into cities daily, adding roughly 60 million new urban dwellers each year. As more people move into urban environments, brands will become partners in improving local environments, adding beauty and strengthening communities.
- Worlds Colliding – the digital and physical worlds will become more intertwined.
- Hyper-Personalization – digital devices will offer customized suggestions based on past purchases and behavior.
- Outsourcing Self-Control – people will count on their technology to prevent them from succumbing to the temptation to overspend.
How have your buying habits changed? How is your company responding to these trends?