Red Zen Marketing

Listening to NPR yesterday driving to Youngstown had me recognizing just how much the current recession has affected the country: auto makers, dealers, financial institutions, as well as service businesses, small manufacturers, large manufacturers --all seem to be wrestling with a downturn that has pushed unemployment to record levels.

It's time for some levity in the midst of it all.

I ran across the following cartoon a few months ago in the wake of my own layoff from my employer of 15 months. It was accompanies by scores of contributed captions, some of the best of which I've shown below.

And more layoff musings:
Companies' leaders sometimes begin to act very strangely when they are taking actions--like letting employees go--that make them feel uncomfortable. No one likes to shatter lives, stall future dreams, be responsible for ending a child's dance or piano lessons, or be the one that precipitated the loss of a family home. Sometimes, memo writers put their foot in their mouth and just make things worse.

Consider this over 1000-word treatise from the eBay PR boss, simultaneously announcing the layoff of 14 members of his "world-class communications team" to allow for hiring of 8 new members (!). Dude, calling your forced churn "simplification" just makes you sound like an insincere oaf. How many previous conference calls had you extolling the virtues of your "world-class communications team" that you are now so ready to dump like soggy corn flakes?  Lesson to leaders: If you use inflated language in meetings/communiques with your team, pumping them up consistently from quarter to quarter thinking you're inspiring, crowing on and on about the great results they're producing, don't be surprised if they consider you to be little more than a stuffed shirt and unfriend you on Facebook. Dude, you had it coming. You know, what the Cluetrain Manifesto has to say about Authenticity applies internally as well.

• "...come in on Saturday to show [supervisor] how you keep things filed, the aid position consistency."
• "...confirming your willingness to meet with your replacement, {name] next Wednesday for 6 hours to perform the required training you received upon accepting the position."
• "...shall be required to refer all client calls received to {sales manager], regardless if they are of a business or personal nature."
• "...pick up your pan from the recent company picnic after hours, so as not to affect office morale..."
• "...return all company shirts (must be dry cleaned) and name tags, as well as all company-identified trophies or awards..."

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The presentation below, from FamileMarquis at Slideshare, shows what powerful punch can be achieved with a clear understanding of your messaging and positioning, and a bit of creativity.

Enjoy

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OK, ok, so the Fort Steele Campground, Fort Steele, B.C. has a wee--twisted--sense of humor. 

Given the ongoing reports of the bear traffic raiding the bird feeders nightly back at my folk's place in Spooner, Wisconsin lately, I was quite amused--in a sick macabre sort of way I suppose.

(Nah, don't worry. Both my folks wear bells and haven't seen a Grizzly in years.)

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All true -- as unbelievable as it sounds.

I once was rejected from a pool of candidates for a job at Avaya because I told the interviewer that when releasing a the most recent version of a previous employer's mobile office suite, the product requirements AND the feature set remained fixed for the final 2/3 of the development cycle prior to release. I'm sure that he was likely an advocate of the Agile Programming development method (hey, I think it's a great method as well and has it's place) and believed that the feature set would remain fluid based on constantly changing user input much later in the process.

Well, having worked in many different industries spanning consumer durables products like ladders and windows, as well as high tech products like software, hardware, and even online Software-as-a-Service, I can say that the real answer to that question of "how late is it acceptable to continue to make changes to your product" actually depends on the product, the customers being served, and the environmental variables involved.  My adversarial interviewer at Avaya wanted to hear his preferred answer parroted back to him, and was unwilling to listen to the reasons why our particular mobile office suite, already quite mature on the old, stale Palm OS platform by then, was not going to be seeing late-breaking feature changes and additions. No matter, for whomever he eventually hired didn't make much of a splash--the project I was interviewing to lead was shelved or fell into obscurity 8 months later as a result of shifting priorities. I guess he didn't see those late breaking "customer requirements" on the horizon, for all his openness to last minute changes. Oops.

Back to bras
So what does all this have to do with bras? Well, as I blogged about earlier, my wife and her friends have been working on a special benefit project-- designing a bra to benefit the American Cancer Society in our area that is hosting an Unhooked bra design competition to benefit cancer research. My dear wife and pals have spent over 30 hours in total working on creating a very uniquely decorated pink bra using the theme Milk and Cookies. 

This theme ties in to another nonprofit benefit that is the passion of Jen DeFazio, one of my wife's dear friends, who some years ago conceived of the Stacking the Odds benefit event for breast cancer. In this event, individuals (or teams?) stack Nabisco Oreo cookies to see how many cookies they can stack up upon a base of a single standard Oreo cookie. It's a fascinating premise for a competition and I can hardly wait to see it this year. Anyhoo--the bra design you see below represents how their design finally came together. 

"Um, what about this whole product development angle and bras? You lost me..."
Yeah, understandable-- just bear with me here. (Fitting bra pictures into a marketing blog is not so easy, folks.)  Well, it all comes down to being flexible to changing concepts and circumstances and needs.

The initial concept for the bra design was Jen's. Milk and Cookies -- makes sense; ties in to the Stacking theme nicely. Jen wanted a pink bra to convey the color of the pink ribbon used by Susan G Komen for the Cure and other breast cancer foundations. She also wanted to find someway to tie the milk theme in in a fun, lighthearted way. And, well, the cookies were obvious. I observed seven ladies working on this project the other evening. During that time, they realized that they could not use perishable items.

This posed a problem. Cookies had to be simulated. Hmmm. A quick search on Wikipedia turned up a bit of suitable Oreo cookie art (since removed!) that was reborn as a reversed iron-on for dark brown or black felt. The ladies had wanted to position some sort of vessel behind the D-cups connected to the taps in the tips of the bras, to be able to turn on the milk at will. That seemed untenable as well. Warm milk was, well, icky. Rolling white paint around the interior of the cups seemed to do the trick nicely--indicating the idea of a full milk container. But, well, they weren't going to connect to the taps too well. Hoses and other intricate connectors were postulated--and rejected.

After some debate, and the first day of long hours designing expired, the ladies left for some sleep. A new day and the challenge still faced them. What to do about the milk? Voila! Inspiration at the grocery store-- pink milk in the form of Dean's Strawberry Milk. This was particularly relevant, since Deans Dairy had been a past sponsor of Jen's Stacking the Odds event in eastern Ohio. It was all coming together. Now, the Milk Chug was positioned within the bra, full size Oreo's were mocked up with a half-eaten cookie left with it's crumbs next to the empty milk container, and the bra design we finally mounted on a presentation board embellished with gold ribbon icons.

                   

Click here to download:

A_Lesson_on_Product_Developmen.zip (1445 KB)

Flexibility in the design concept had ensured success. If any of the initial concepts had been held to too stringently, the design would have come off too forced. Creativity and serendipity each had a role to play in creating the final product.

Often in product development we fail to be open to serendipity because we become too focused on our initial thoughts of where we are headed. Like the Avaya head of R&D, we have our preconceived notions of the answers we're looking for and fail to ask new questions that might illuminate the situtation, or fail to open our eyes in mundane circumstances -- like the Jen in the grocery store -- to see new possibilities that enable new creative solutions.

Where do you need to open your eyes to new possibilities in your business. Where could your customers help you see differently?

Yes, I can help... 

Mike Compeau
Red Zen Marketing
www.twitter.com/mikecompeau
724-734-1624

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Get 7 women to decorate a bra for the American Cancer Society and Susan G Komen for the Cure

Then just sit back and watch, and listen.

                                                                                                         

Click here to download:

How_to_spend_an_evening_laughi.zip (8385 KB)

My wife and her friends from First National Bank, Hermitage, PA, spent this evening in creative abandon. The reason was the "Unhooked" competition to be held on June 5 at the Tiffany Banquet Center in nearby Brookfield, Ohio, as a benefit to raise money for the American Cancer Society's fight against cancer, and specifically with this event, to raise awareness of breast cancer.

Thus, this team, with avid (rabid?) leader Jen DeFazio at the helm, descended upon our home; a cadre of like-minded ladies to set about on an awesome mission. Now, understand, Jen has been working hard raising breast cancer awareness for a number of years, having conceived and organized the very novel "Stacking the Odds" Oreo cookie-stacking competitions in western PA and eastern OH to benefit the Susan G Komen Race for the Cure organization in years past. So it was natural that Jen and her troop were looking to inject this theme into their bra design entry for the first annual local ACS "Unhooked" competition this year. Their theme pick was a natural...

2009 Bra Design Theme: Milk and Cookies

As the photographs in this series show, the standard very large white 'D' cup bra was first RIT dyed in pink dye last evening to provide a willing and ample canvas. Next, the ladies signed "Mother", "Sister" and other cancer-impacted relations on the side panels along with afixing various metallic terms of endearment to embellish and adorn. Though a Twitter dialog was established during the day with @KomenForTheCure to make inquiries, no positive response was received in time to provide for use of the Susan G Komen logo on the bra, so this planned feature had to be omitted from the right cup. 

The left cup featured the " Stacking the Odds" logo to provide awareness for the 2009 Oreo stacking competition, currently planned for November 7, 2009 in Hermitage at the High School (room location TBA). Special milk cups were prepared (that's paint in there, people) to provide the illusion of that vital sustenance--these are to be afixed within the concave portion of the cups, with the clever and functional spigots to be attached, thus illustrating the critical role breasts play in life.

To interject the Stacking the Odds cookie theme, over 2 dozen faux black/white baked chocolate cake and milk-creme-filled cookies looking very much like Nabisco Oreo cookies were affixed to the bra straps like so many jewels in the crown of this endowed pink lady. These were made of three layers of felt, with the top dark brown/black layer including an iron-on pattern to resemble a famous cookie.

Alas Podcast fans: No audio was recorded during this event--it would not likey have been appropriate for a family oriented blog, in any case.
Enjoy the photos, and interpolate related to the good times as you are apt to do anyway.

If you need assistance with bra decorating, contact me for names and email addresses of the guilty parties shown.

(Yes, I can help you with that...)

Mike Compeau
Red Zen Marketing

mike.compeau@compeau.net
www.twitter.com/mikecompeau

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Watch 7 women decorate a bra for the American Cancer Society and Susan G Komen for the Cure

See new entry here

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Perhaps my favorite business illustration ever, this really nails the worst case New Product Development situation to a tee. Enjoy. (Yes, I can help with that...)
 
Mike Compeau
mike.compeau@compeau.net
www.twitter.com/mikecompeau

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Rescue724 - Who else makes free house calls for pest removal?

Bob Travis, a bee keeper hailing from New Wilmington, PA, became my best friend when he pulled into the drive in his gray pickup at 11:15am, just as the bees were beginning to increase their activity level. In his heavy cotton white jumpsuit and matching zippered screen-hood, Bob wasn't too worried about fashion, but he was taking some basic precautions. It was clear he'd done this awhile--for forty years, actually--as he left his hands gloveless. "So I don't drop anything and get them angry," he explained.

                                                                   

Click here to download:

Home_is_where_you_hang_your_...zip (8588 KB)

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