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Communications, Marketing

5 Ways To Be Strategic with Data

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In business we look at the information we gather from things like surveys, buying habits, polls and online activity to learn preferences, find trends and spot opportunities.  The information we gather acts as building blocks for everything from marketing campaigns to product development, but I sometimes wonder if we are outsmarting ourselves.  All of the data in the world isn’t going to deliver results if we aren’t also employing an effective strategy or if you prefer, creative thinking to our actions.

A few years ago Kathleen Wynne, the former premier of Ontario, participated in Reddit’s AMA (Ask Me Anything) forum.  No doubt she was attempting to get in touch with a younger demographic and take advantage of a popular social media channel to do it.  The data said that the medium would not only put her in touch with the right audience but it’s “hip” factor might also give her a boost in the polls. The audience and the medium were right – the challenge, of course, was the message. 

Ms. Wynne’s team understood the popularity of the medium but seemed to miss the mark on the nature of it. Rather than embracing the “ask me anything” forum and the consequent, “answer everything” that it implied, Ms. Wynne delivered prepared answers or no answers at all.  Participants were unimpressed. The event consequently had the opposite effect from what was intended. To put it succinctly, the Reddit engagement was a fail. But then anyone who has actually been on Reddit could have told the planners that it was the wrong place to be if you weren’t comfortable in being completely open (and possibly embarrassing yourself). Not exactly the inclination of politicians of any stripe.

Data is a tool; it cannot replace careful strategy, thoughtful engagement or a creative approach to solving communications challenges.  You can achieve amazing numbers on your “Twitter feed” and thousands of “likes” on your Facebook account and still see no appreciable difference in sales if you are not also thinking about the wants and needs of your clients. If all you want is “likes” on your Facebook account, run contests with good prizes, buy Google and Facebook ads, engage popular bloggers to review and promote your services or products. Change it up and do it again.  But if you want to get people engaged on your issue or invested in your products or services, then you’re going to have to be more strategic.

1.    Expose Yourself to New Thinking: Read, listen and engage in conversations that are outside of your field.  Ideas that are tried and true in one area are often fodder for new discoveries in another.  Multitasking is actually quite useful in this instance.  When you are working on different projects your mind is obliged to shift gears frequently, keeping it active, but it also means that the thinking you apply to solve problems in one area may lend you additional strength to solve problems in another.

2.    Take The Unexpected Seriously: When strange or unanticipated outcomes occur, investigate them.  Find out why they happened. For example, when retailers realized that their shopper profiling data was having an unexpected negative impact, they investigated and found that their coupons and targeted ads were so accurate they actually creeped out shoppers. Rather than making shoppers feel that their needs were being addressed, they made them feel as though their privacy was being violated. To reduce the creep factor retailers began to introduce unrelated content.  For example, new moms would get coupons for diapers and other baby paraphernalia, but they would also get lawnmower ads and tire specials. This made the coupons useful, but also feel less personally directed.

3.    Learn From Success: Seek out and work with people who are doing good things or have been successful in the past.  Study their methods and determine if their approach can be used to achieve successful results for you. The Pancreatic Cancer Action organization recently ran an ad campaign with the tagline, “I wish I had breast cancer.” Understandably the ad generated a fair bit of outrage and shock.  It also garnered an unprecedented amount of attention towards pancreatic cancer that resulted in the head of the organization giving numerous interviews in the UK, U.S. and Canada. In those interviews, the issues facing those with the disease were discussed at length. Similar shock approaches were used in the early days of Aids research and consequently generated millions of dollars in research.

4.    Take Advantage of Existing Opportunities: When the cashier at Mac Donald’s asks you if you would like fries with your order, that’s a perfect example of taking advantage of an existing opportunity. A similar approach would be looking to existing clients to expand business opportunities.

5.    Turn a Negative into a Positive: In December of 2011, Alec Baldwin was removed from an American Airlines flight after he refused to stop playing a game. The flight was delayed and significant coverage followed. Baldwin could have apologized to the airline for causing the flight to be delayed, but he took a different approach.  Shortly after the event and amid the media stories he appeared on Saturday Night Live and posed as the pilot of the flight.  In that guise, he delivered an apology to himself and a humorous and mocking skit that garnered him praise for being a savvy PR pro.  The skit also made American Airlines look petty and foolish.

Keep in mind that being creative or strategic is an act of will. There are no quick and easy answers. Creative people work at it.  They think hard and try out ideas, hundreds of them if not more before they hit upon those that work.

Have you ever stumbled upon a great idea in an unexpected place? How do you get yourself into a strategic frame of mind?

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Government Relations

Two Steps Forward…

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We_Can_Do_It!

With the American primaries heating up there has been a fair bit of coverage and discussion on women’s voting patterns and in particular, Hilary Clinton’s popularity with women voters. Initially I was surprised to learn that Bernie Sanders was gaining traction with young women.  Really, a seventy-four year old man could better represent women than a… wait a minute, sixty-eight year old woman.

The truth is, it’s a bit of a stretch that either of them really understand how young women think. It’s also a bit of a stretch to tell them how they should vote, period. If we older women really want to establish that women have the right to make their own choices, then we have to reconsider telling women, young or old how they should do anything, including vote. That we would tell them they should vote for someone based on nothing more than their gender is even more ridiculous.

I was a little embarrassed for feminists this week. When 78 year old Madeleine Albright and 81 year old Gloria Steinem weighed into the American political debate  they made me cringe.  They didn’t come across as particularly wise and they certainly didn’t seem to think that young women could think for themselves. I’ve always considered myself a feminists, but it seems my definition differs from these women in some significant ways.

For me, it meant that despite the fact that I was a young black woman, I could be a political assistant, not secretary, on Parliament Hill.  It was that same thinking that lead me to believe that I could be an equally effective lobbyist for national and international corporations a few years later. The fact that I was often the only woman in the room, not to mention the only black person, never phased me. I knew as much or more about how government worked and I could strategize with the best of them.  It never took long for them to stop wondering why I was in charge of their lobbying efforts. Amazing what happens when you are a strong, self-confident woman.

Being a feminists has always meant to me, that I had the right to pursue whatever dreams, positions or electoral preferences I had. It’s a pity if that that definition has changed and small wonder that young women today have a hard time associating themselves with the concept of feminism.

Soon enough the furor over the poorly stated comments of Albright and Steinem will die down and Americans will be back to considering their options based on the quality of the candidate rather than their sex. If nothing else, I and the rest of the world can only hope that when the time comes, whoever the democrats choose, they won’t be facing Donald Trump, because he is far more of a threat to women, minorities and religious freedom than either Bernie or Hilary.

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Government Relations

Loathing Fear

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English: Photograph of Parliament Hill, Ottawa...On Wednesday, October 22, 2014 a lone gunman gave Ottawa a taste of fear. In the days following the tragic events in Ottawa’s downtown, the media covered the story with slow, in-depth and repetitive detail. Every aspect discussed, every perspective pursued. Even now we continue to look and ponder. We learned the anatomy of the fear experienced by everyone. Those on Parliament Hill who heard shots and then knew nothing more of what transpired for hours. We learned of the fear experienced by those in lock down in the many government buildings surrounding the Parliamentary Precinct. We heard of the fear experienced by the sergeant-at-arms who confronted and killed a man for the first time in his long career of service. We heard about the fear of the pedestrians close to the war memorial where a young soldier lost his life. The fear of the passerby who stopped and comforted the dying soldier as he drew his last breath and of course, we learned of the fear and shock he must have felt on that fall day.

No doubt if we could gage the level of stress experienced by the city of Ottawa on that day it would have spiked through the charts, but more concerning for me is the level of fear that we retain as the events of that awful day fade away. “Should we tighten security on Parliament Hill?” one poll asked and of course in the rush of fear following the shootings, the public said, “Of course.”

Well as someone who has always been proud of the fact that we give our citizens open access to our parliament it makes me angry to think that one gunman’s loathsome actions could charge us so full of fear that we create barriers between the public and those who run the country. Do we need to tighten the way we implement current security? Certainly. Are there things that could have been done better? No doubt. But as an exercise in marketing fear, I’d like the gunman’s actions to ultimately fail. Democracy, personal rights, political and religious freedom are among the things we put at risk when we let fear campaigns dictate our actions.

Today, when this post goes up, a week after that gunman terrorized MPs and citizens alike, I will be on Parliament Hill along side hundreds of other people. Like them, I will be meeting with individual MPs, telling my story. Like those others, I have a good story to share, one focused on public health, one acting in the public interest. More importantly, I’ll be reminding MPs, and perhaps myself, that they are there for very good reason and that access to the public and the publics’ access to them should never be the price we pay for security. I expect security will take a little longer, but I am pleased to know that voices like mine will work to drown out a loathsome message of fear.

Photograph of Parliament Hill, Ottawa. Taken from Ottawa/Ontario end of Alexandra Bridge. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

 

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