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.