Giving A Great Demo

Today I had a client ask me for advice on giving great product demonstrations. She wanted to know if her demos were effective and was looking for ways to improve. She's a smart executive for asking the question.
Product demonstrations are one of the most necessary communications tool for any tech company; software, hardware or online service. You've got to be able to show someone the goods in a way that is memorable, engaging and different than the competition.
In fact, I have seen many interviews completely undone by the lack of a good demo. No matter how great the market analysis might be, or the business strategy, if the product doesn't deliver most journalists will turn a deaf ear. And, the only way to present a killer product is through an even more-killer demo.
So, what are my tips? There are only five but to get them right will take a lot of preparation time and effort. A good demo will make all of these look incredibly easy and straightforward.
1. Start from the beginning and treat the demo as if you are telling a story. As any good story, the demo should have a distinct flow (beginning, middle, end), it needs to have a plot, it needs to have drama, and it should have a protagonist. Most often the product itself is the protagonist and becomes the "white knight" solving the dramatic problems that are set-up in the first few minutes of the demo. Remember, you, the demoer, are NOT the protagonist. The demo isn't about you. The demo is about your product and about the consumers who will benefit from your product.
2. Start by assuming nothing and consequently your demo will be very complete. Start with a blank sheet. Assume your audience knows absolutely nothing about your space, your product, your service. Because you are so close to the product, this is actually very difficult to do. But, too often, demoers leave out critical, elementary information because they make too many assumptions about the listeners knowledge level.
3. Weave in interesting research, data and factoids to support your claims and give credibility to the features and funcitonality. Again, this sounds simple but takes a ton of work. You need to gather all the research you can about your market, your users, your business and distill them down into those facts that best support your claims. Some of this research will be from industry research firms (such as Forrester, or Jupiter), other material you will find internally from your marketing and product development organizations. Make sure you vet everything: focus group results, user testing videos, customer service reports.
I learned the essence of this approach from Scott Cook, co-founder of Intuit who is a master of building brand credibility through consumer data.
4. Use intestesting language to keep the listener engaged. Let's face it, the people you are showing your demo too have seen hundreds of them. You've got to go the extra distance to make your demo stand out and be memorable. You can't rely on tired technology buzz words or catch-phases. You've got to pepper the narrative with words and comments that the listener isn't expecting to hear. One way to do this is to speak through the voice of the customer. Talk to customers and listen to their stories and then use these stories as your own throughout the demo.
5. Know what makes your product different than the rest and focus on these attributes. The objective of any demo is to make your product stand out from the pack. Before putting together your demo, you've got to do a thorough competitive analysis that compares your product with all others in it's related "set". You need to be brutally honest on how your product stacks up and delineate your strong suits. These points of differentiation are what you want to focus on in your demo.
Well, that about does it. Five simple steps to a flawless demo. Now, get to work!

Tips from the Pros: Crisis Communications

Last Friday the Silicon Valley Public Relations Socitey of America hosted a crisis communications panel and discussion. The panelists represented communications pros from such blue-chip companies as Intel, Franklin Templeton, McKesson and Facebook. All of these folks have been through more than their fair share of tough PR situations and had plenty of tips to share with the audience. Here's a snapshot of what they recommend; common sense but still worth mentioning again.
1. Understand the news cycle. Chuck Mulloy from the Intel Global Communications Group commented several times about the need to understand and manage the news cycle. His point: know when NOT to elevate a crisis by commenting and potentially extending the news cycle into another round. Some stories will die a timely death if just left alone.
This sounds straightforward but can be a tricky call to make; if a story impacts consumers and if consumer activists are involved, do not expect the story to go away until those activists are satiated.
2. Educate your executives. It was recommended that this be an ongoing education process with all the leading executives at the company, helping them to understand the nature of a crisis and what would be expected of them in the face of a crisis. Several of the panelists described ongoing media awareness training offered internally to executives and managers.
3. Have a plan. All of the pros agreed that every firm should have a business continuity plan in-place so that in times of crisis there are pre-set guidelines to keep the business and communications flowing. These plans should be tested periodically and revised annually.
4. Know your people. As a PR pro, you need to know who does what internally and who knows what internally so you can quickly and effectively marshall resources as needed. This knowledge allows you to be responsive and prepared throughout the crisis.
5. Think globally. In today's world crisis are not contained to a specific geography; they quickly become global issues. Any plan, proactive or reactive, needs to take this into account.
6. Use technology to monitor the news. Brandee Barker of Facebook talked about how she and her staff routinely monitor, not just their own and other social media sites, but also Twitter, Digg, and the other leading edge "new media" services.
7. Remember always, be open and honest. The key to any crisis situation is maintaining the trust of your constituents. Communications need to be timely, open and honest.
Thanks PRSA Silicon Valley and all the panelists for such a valuable program.

Brad Bird on Innovation in Found/Read

If you are interested in motivating your team and fostering innovation, this post of an interview with the Pixar creative genius, Brad Bird, at Found/Read, the latest GigaOm network blog, is a "must-read". The interview was originally published in the McKinsey Quarterly and in her post, Carleen Hawn breaks down the interview into nine lessons well-worth learning.
Although I think all of these lessons are extremely prescient, Lesson 8, "Get Rid of Weak Links", strikes me as perhaps the most critical as well as the most challenging.
In my 12 years of owning and operating a large strategic communications firm, time and time again my business partner and I would recognize a "weak link" within the staff. The negativism and poor performance would continually bring down the morale and performance level of other team members. But invariably we found it immensely difficult to deal with the issue.
As one of our advisory board members once reminded us, it's more important to water the flowers than the weeds.
Also, as a side note, I'm proud to say that Brad Bird is from my home town, the idyllic Corvallis, Oregon.
Brad, thanks for the awesome work!

How To Do It Right: Tradeshows

I spent much of last week at the annual RSA security industry trade show and conference in San Francisco. And, as much as I don't want to write about clients, I am so impressed with the way Voltage Security presented themselves, it's worth mentioning here.
A few years ago the buzz in marketing was about "integrated" marketing. Implementing a complete campaign, using a variety of tactical elements, all designed to create a single, integrated impression. In many ways, integrated campaigns are the holy grail of marketing; what everyone strives to achieve but most fall short in doing so.
Achieving an integrated presence at a large trade show, such as RSA, is difficult and expensive. There are hundreds of vendors competing for attention, many have similar messages so differentiation is almost impossible and the attendees become "blinded" by all the promotions being thrown at them in a concentrated place over a short period of time.
How did Voltage manage to overcome this and stand out in the crowd, on a limited budget?
1. Get the right team together. Wasim Ahmad, vice president of marketing, gathered together a stellar team of professionals to help execute the elements of the show. Each pro had many years of trade show experience to draw from. This wasn't a job for newbies.
2. Begin planning well in advance. Wasim nailed down the key elements of his approach many, many months before the show. Key to the success for Voltage was having an off-show floor meeting suite for use by the sales team. The location had to be close to Moscone for easy access by busy executives and prospects. Wasim booked one of the premiere meeting rooms at a hotel adjacent to the show floor over nine months in-advance. As a result, the Voltage sales suite hummed with meetings, morning,noon and night.
3. Build a tradition. At their first RSA in 2004, Voltage hosted the Voltage Martini Mixer, an after show hours party, for friends of the company. Voltage has invested in this same party every year since then, and now it's a tradition that customers, partners, prospects and industry participants look forward to attending. This year's party was better than ever.
4. Create a theme and execute well. This year, for the first time, Voltage invested in a booth on the show floor. Wasim and his crew knew they needed some kind of promotion to get people into the booth and engaged with the Voltage brand. They created a fun promotion based on decrypting a mock credit-card number, with the chance to win a prize of $100.00. The promotion was a huge hit and tied together key messages that relate to Voltage's positioning: information encryption, ease-of-use, innovative solutions.
5. Tie-in online marketing. As the show unfolded, Voltage launched an updated web presence with a fresh look and feel. This complemented the new, expanded product line positioning that the company unveiled throughout the run of the conference. It ensured that those who could not attend the conference were able to participate in the excitement and learn about what's new at Voltage.
Taken singularly, each of these elements is important and difficult to "get right". Executed together, in a truly integrated fashion, is doubly difficult to achieve but exponentially more effective.
Congratulations Voltage, for showing us how to do a trade show the right way.

"Out of Print" by Eric Alterman

For those of you following the trials and tribulations of the evolving news media, another great read is a recent article in the New Yorker, "Out of Print" by Eric Alterman.

25 Most Valuable Blogs

On March 26th, 24/7 Wall Street published its analysis of the 25 Most Valuable Blogs. It's an amazing list of new media that have been largely built in the last three-to-five years. In most sectors, technology (TechCrunch), Politics (Huffington Post), Media (Gawker) these blogs are now driving the news cycle for both online bloggers and off line print journalists. It's clear that this trend is only the beginning and the value of these and other blogs should continue to move up and to the right.

State of the News Media

Much has been written about the "State of the News Media" report published in late March by the Project for Excellence in Journalism so I won't spend time restating any of the obvious. Suffice it to say that, as we all know, disruption is overtaking traditional media and it won't be long before we consume all of our news digitally. This shouldn't be any surprise to those of us who work closely with the media and technology; in terms of a growing transition away from print, that train has left the station.
What I find most interesting about this report is the section "The Future of Advertising". This should be on the "must read" section of all practicing marketing professionals. It gives a concise analysis of the recent media trends from an advertisers perspective. And, talks about the dramatic shift in ad dollars to the Internet which is being preceded by the growing amount of time consumers spend online each day.
Most interesting, from a marketing services perspective, is the following:

"This ability to get much more granular data and the pressure felt by chief marketing officers to justify their ad dollars have made ad spending accountability the No. 1 priority among marketers today.
“ 'Accountability has gone from a buzzword to something that is much more expected in marketing and advertising spend,” says Matt Freeman, CEO of Tribal DDB, a digital offshoot of the ad agency DDB Worldwide, part of Omnicom Group. “That has led to a client shift to more addressable media.” More addressable media usually means anything digitally trackable, from online display ads to offline ads that ask cell phone users to text-message the advertiser to win a prize. Adds Denise Warren, chief advertising officer of The New York Times Media Group, “The [chief marketing officer] has to really show that their marketing spend is delivering results.' "

The challenge for all of us is to figure out how to measure the results of the services we provide in this brave new world.