The Go Game--Team Building

Last Friday I had the immense pleasure of participating in a team-building exercise with one of my clients. Typically, I'm a little leery of these adventures. Too many times the experience tries too hard to force people into interactions and the whole affairs ends up being more awkward than productive.

Well, I must say I was very pleasantly surprised. Delighted, as a matter of fact. The game was masterminded by an excellent groups of folks who market "The Go Game". We split into three teams and played for about two hours using the University Avenue area of Palo Alto as our "playground".

The game itself is like a multi-media scavenger hunt. The game is played as each team fans out completing "missions" as directed by the game leader. The game is customized somewhat to the specific team, or company participating.

I don't want to say a whole lot more about the game itself because if you are lucky enough to participate, the surprises are part of the fun. Suffice it to say that it's done in a way in which everyone truly is a "winner". It's challenging and fun, and interactive enough to appeal to extroverts without causing embarrassment or awkward moments for those who are more inhibited.

Rethinking the Presentation

My client, whom I've mentioned before in this blog, Wasim Ahmad, vice president of marketing at Voltage Security recently recommended reading Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds. I'm only about halfway through the book but I'm already a convert and rethinking my own presentations and those I help my clients prepare. Here is Garr's blog with more insights.

The Best Corporate Reputations? You Decide

The Reputation Institute, a private consultancy dedicated to corporate reputation management, has just published its 2008 Global Pulse Report which attempts to measure corporate reputations. A synopsis of the U.S. study is available for download at the Institutes's website and it makes for interesting reading by anyone in the business of advising clients about reputation issues. (The complete report is available for a hefty fee.)
The global report looks at 600 companies; the U.S. portion ranks 150 companies. The rankings are a result of over 60,000 online consumer interviews across 27 countries.
Of the 150 U.S. companies measured, are you surprised that Google ranked #1? With the mantra of "do no evil", it appears consumers believe that Google continues to act positively on their behalf.
Keep in mind, this is a measure of broad consumer perception, not necessarily the perception of those reading the business pages day-in and day-out.
The report notes that a high score indicates that consumers have a "high level of trust, respect, and good feelings for the company".
Of the top 10 companies, most are well known consumer brand companies: Johnson & Johnson at #2, Kraft Foods at #3, etc.
But, oddly enough, of the tech companies, fading brands such as Xerox (#8), Texas Instruments (#10) and Kodak (#11) handily beat out such brands such as Apple (#17) and Microsoft which comes in at a disappointing #43.
The report also points out that there is a very high correlation between levels of recommendation and what the authors call "support" or recommendation. In other words, the better the reputation ranking, the more likely consumers are to recommend the company.
What this report also says to me is that consumers have a long memory and, perhaps especially with consumer technology, even "old" names still carry cachet.
It's hard to believe that Xerox, Kodak and TI are beating Apple.
We know there is a changing of the guard in tech brands but the word hasn't got out to the general consumer quite yet.

The New Demographics

This fascinating article "The Changing Face of the American Consumer", published in this week's Ad Age, by Peter Francese, outlines the leading demographic trends as summarized from the US Census data and details specific advise on how savvy marketeers may deal with these shifts. Francese, the founding publisher of American Demographics Magazine, is a reliable source for this kind of thoughtful analysis.
We all know that the U.S. population is trending older as the baby boomer generation continues to age, and that immigration is changing the face of our nation, particularly in the west. But, other insights by Francese are truly surprising--the analysis of female demographics and what this means for spending trends is very interesting. As, is the information about trend differences based on geography.
The most obvious insight is the section on teens and mobility. Any marketer can look around today's city streets and realize that teens, tweens and young adults are primarily interacting through their cell phones. Those of us immersed in the tech world are all ready well aware of the profound changes this will mean for all of us as time moves on.
One of the most interesting points made is that right now, the marketers trying to reach this burgeoning, mobile younger demographic is older, and in many cases, much older.
And, that's a clear disconnect.