It’s not everyday as a B2B marketer that you get a chance to see one of  your client projects immortalized in cake, but thanks to the official corporate launch of  the Teranet eXpress website and the creative culinary talents of Desperate Cake Wives we got to have our cake and eat it too!

As we enter into a new decade, it’s clear that internet, social and mobile marketing will continue their rapid march to marketing domination. The importance of SEO, Blogs, Twitter, Linked-In, Facebook and their ilk in nurturing and capturing leads and building brand loyalty cannot be overstated these days. However, as I’ve argued in a previous blog, despite the dire predictions, traditional print advertising and marketing are not quite dead yet and should still be very much part of a B2B marketer’s strategic arsenal.

It is all too easy to get caught up in the inbound marketing mania that exists today and overlook the relevance and effectiveness of traditional outbound marketing techniques (print/tv/radio advertising, telemarketing, direct mail, trade shows etc.)  in reaching out and influencing your B2B target audiences.

Print certainly has none of the business  cachet that the internet, mobile and social marketing have today. So it’s always tempting for marketing consultants to talk up and push trending B2B marketing vehicles at the expense of the traditional tried and true, like print advertising, direct mail and good old-fashioned cold calling.

It certainly doesn’t help that traditional print marketing campaigns can be far more expensive to run than its internet based counterpart. And unlike the bounty of analytical data that can be culled in real-time out of internet marketing efforts, accurately measuring a campaign’s ROI and effectiveness in print is still more of a pipe dream than practical reality.

So why even advocate for traditional print marketing?

Because, as I have pointed out in a previous posting, at the end of the day, getting a potential customer to develop awareness, interest and preference for your products and services before a first contact is made is still the name of the game and this simple and fundamental truth of B2B marketing is as true today as it was decades ago.

For all of the internet’s undisputed customer draw and influence, it possesses marketing and audience “blind spots” that can still, at times, be better reached and targeted by traditional print campaigns. Don’t take our word for it: just ask Google.

This is the full page tabloid ad that Google ran in the Business section of  the Toronto Globe and Mail – Canada’s National newspaper - unabashedly introducing AdWords to Canadian small business.  I discovered it as part of my breakfast routine on December 17th (it ran again on the 22nd). I nearly choked on my cereal! Seeing an ad by Google in a newspaper was for me the equivalent of walking into a Burger King and discovering a renowned vegan guru – with a large cult following – quietly sitting in the corner of the restaurant savoring the last meaty morsels of a Whopper with cheese.

That is to say, you would not expect Google, the world’s leading online juggernaut, with all their back room SEO knowledge and internet savviness at their disposal, to be placing a full page ad in a local Toronto newspaper. After all newspapers are considered to be the most endangered of all media species, thanks in large part to the online world that Google is helping to create.

Everyday internet evangelists the world over preach the Gospel of Google and how SEO is the salvation of Business Marketing. To these true believers only internet heretics could be blind enough to spend their marketing dollars on local newspaper ads when they could get so much more bang for their marketing buck using it online.

To make matters worse, not only is Google advertising in a newspaper, they are also offering a $100 incentive promotion to start using AdWords. One of the great and justifiable arguments for marketing online today is that efforts there can generate the lowest cost per lead as compared to traditional print marketing. And at $100 spent for every customer earned, Google’s newspaper promotion certainly proves that cost differential point.

This is actually not the first time I have come across a print promotion by Google: Across the pond, KnowledgeBank, a leading UK B2B marketing group has blogged about their own similar reaction at receiving a print promotion from Google. They called the piece the most expensive direct mailer ever.

So how to explain Google’s decision to use print marketing to reach their prospects?

It’s very simple. I suspect Google likely wants to reach the large untapped group of small business owners who are, if not wholly internet unsavvy, are at the very least, internet marketing ignorant. They may already have a rudimentary website set up for their business, just enough to have an online presence, but are not really doing much with it. They may have a superficial understanding of SEO but nothing more. The marketing dollars they do have may be going into newspaper or Yellow Page advertising and although they might consider using AdWords online, they have probably never heard of it or at the very least have little understanding of how it can help grow their business.

The bottom line is that this is a classic B2B marketing challenge and the most effective way to reach this particular group is to go offline and use interruptive marketing tactics that can effectively catch these prospects’ attention. This group will likely never come around to doing the research online that will lead them to eventually discovering AdWords on their own.  At least, not in the near future. Clearly Google concluded that a full page ad with a stand out $100 incentive offer, running in the business section of Canada’s national newspaper, was the most impactful way to reach out to Canadian Small Business without delay.

It would certainly not have been surprising to hear that Google had chose an online only campaign for promoting their online marketing products like Adwords. After all, not only are they an internet focused business; they are the undisputed master of this domain.

What is perhaps most encouraging for me about Google’s offline efforts is that, unlike their devoted followers, they are not rigid ideologues when it comes to their marketing strategies. They are evidently prepared to use whatever means is necessary and available at their disposal as marketers to achieve their sales and marketing objectives. And if that means using print – so be it!

This is in strong contrast to the growing list of marketing consultants who insist that their clients drop all offline efforts and turn to online strategies only; A declaration derived not out of an intimate understanding of their clients’ marketing needs but more out an ideological marketing “philosophy” that dismisses out-of-hand and on principle, anything in marketing that is non-internet based.

Surprisingly yet heartily, Google is clearly not in that camp. They understand that no one media (even the net!) has all the answers to a company’s varied marketing challenges and target audiences. As we do, they believe that sales and branding challenges are best served with an integrated mix of both online and offline strategies.

In my heart I am still very much the tech nerd I was as a teen who would marvel at a every new tech advancement (which – to date me – meant pong, electonic calculators, LED watches, VCRs and internet BBSs) and then fast forward in my mind to the future imagining where these rudimentary auspicious starts could and would likely go with time and nurturing.

The pace and abundance of technological advancements has greatly accelerated since my teens and so many of  my early visions and aspirations for the future (mostly inspired by watching Star Trek) are here and now. To that point, I recently watched a show on the Discovery Channel with an unlikely and provocative  title:  How William Shatner changed the world. William Shatner is of course the great Canadian actor who portrayed Captain Kirk of the Starship Enterprise on TV’s Star Trek.  Though the title was meant to be tongue-in-cheek it is actually based on an interesting kernel of truth.

The premise of the Discovery Channel show was that a generation of  1960′s and 70′s geek teens (like me only smarter) were inspired enough by the cool gadgets and sci-fi futures portrayed on Star Trek that they ended up pursuing careers that would allow them to turn the show’s science fiction into reality.

So for example, the show profiles  Martin Cooper, the chief engineer at Motorola who invented the cell phone and who willingly admits that the  Star Trek communicator was his inspiration for the cell phone. He also discusses how Star Trek introduced the concept of computer voice recognition and command. iPads, flat screen panels, personal computers, bluetooth headsets – all have there forebearers on Star Trek.

That is all to say that I sometimes  have to pinch myself while using my iPhone to be sure I am still  not a geek teen dreaming this up, because this technological marvel incorporates just about everything a Star Trek fan in the early 70s could have wished for in a smart mobile device – and then some.

But it is the smart phone’s future that really gets the geek in me racing. After all we are really only a couple of generations into the smart phone revolution and already the feature leaps and bounds we are witnessing are beyond expectations. And nothing in recent memory has captured my imagination more than Google’s Goggle.

It’s clear at some point Google conducted a visioning session in an effort to think outside the box trying to identify a core purpose and competence for the company that could make it future-proof. One excerise that is often used in these workshops is to envision a Big Hairy Audacious Goal (“BHAG“).  For Microsoft it was once: a computer on every desktop. For FedEx: a package delivered overnight to anywhere in the world. According to Google its BHAG is: To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.

Our first real insight into the full breadth, scope and seriousness of Google’s ambitions in truly fullfilling its BHAG vision was realized with the introduction of the Google Earth Project: a complete searchable mapping of  the Earth’s surface by satellite overhead and local visual searching at a street level with Street View. Two things that would have been worthy BHAGs in of themselves not that too long ago.

With Google’s new mobile app you can begin to see the other ways Google hopes to redefine the search for information. Google Goggle enables people to get information about things in the physical world by simply taking a picture of them with their mobile devices. Currently Google claims you can take a picture of famous paintings, landmarks, logos, wines and books and Goggle will be able to identify the things photographed and then take you directly online, via your mobile device, to a Google page on the subject at hand.

Impressive enough in theory but does it actually work? Your intrepid blogger put it to the test with pretty impressive results. My focus was on logo identification, seeing as logo development is an area of our business.

For my first logo test I focused on a sentimental Canadian favorite: Tim Hortons. I photographed a side of my favorite “double double” cup and after a few seconds of processing, Goggle arrived at the results below, correctly identifying not only the logo but the company’s slogan in french: Toujours frais cafe. Always fresh coffee.

For the next three tests I focused on Coca-Cola bottles – with a twist: I have an extensive collection of Coca-Cola bottles that include Cokes from around the world with the familiar logo redone in the local language. I also have some special edition bottles. So the three I chose to shoot were a special edition red aluminum bottle with an oversized logo that was wrapped around the bottle making it potentially harder for Goggle to interpret. I also chose to shoot a bottle with a Thai script coke logo and an Israeli Hebrew script coke logo. The results from Goggle? Remarkably 3 for 3! All three times Goggle correctly identified the logo as either Coke or Coca-Cola despite the language differences. That’s no small feat! (You can click on the images to view the results larger)

Finally, beyond dominating and conquering the information world, Google is also working on less lofty goals that still need to be practically met — like developing better ways for marketers to use Google products and services to bridge and integrate their offline and online marketing efforts, while also boosting their customer interactions with mobile users.

On example is the recent effort by Google to get a dominant foothold into the rapidly growing but fragmented QR Code technology market

In that vein, Google has recently partnered with T-Mobile, DIAGEO, Buick, Walt Disney Pictures, and Delta Airlines to launch a new Google Goggles marketing experiment where “Goggle-enabled” ads can be photographed with a mobile device and much like in QR Coded campaigns, the user would be directed and tracked to a specified informational web page. (click image above to view larger)

Clearly the next great marketing front in the ongoing battle for lead generation and brand building will be fought in the mobile device arena. The early skirmishes have already begun and it is not yet possible to forecast who will gain ground and who will lose it. But it is pretty clear already that Google is a force to be reckoned with.

But then the same thing could be said of Apple, RIM or Facebook for that matter.  But in the end, whoever of these giants wins or loses, only one thing can be certain: the fireworks and creativity that will be unleashed out of this confrontation will only work to further propel mobile smart technologies forward and we as both marketers and consumers will ultimately be the true beneficiaries of the advancements.

Blog Update: Google Wants Its Products to Talk Back to Users Star Trek  Style

They say the best way to draw readers into your blog postings is to come up with an attention grabbing headline and visual.  Well,  I think with this image, I have succeeded pretty well.  But at the same time, as a reader, you would be right to sceptically wonder what I could possibly have to say in a blog post that would be legit grounds for heading it up with a  humorous  image of  a fat lady submerged underwater?

Have I chosen the image because it best  captures the challenges and opportunities we face today as B2B marketers trying to navigate though an ocean of analytical data available online? Or did I pick this visual because I want to outline  strategies for staying buoyant as a marketer with limited budgets but large ambitions?  Both are  good topics worthy of future blogs, but neither are in fact the actual grounds for posting the visual.

So why then is it the lead to this blog entry? The reason is actually at the heart of this posting. And it is an interesting and surprising tale of my personal and unexpected brush with the viral power of the internet and social media.

The point of entry to this story  begins with my weekly web viewing habits.  My surfing habits, like most of yours, can get varied at times: From visiting news of the day sites like Huffington Post,  Slate, Technorati, and  Mashable.  To frequenting the more eclectic web worlds  of  shorpy notcot, and meepzorp.

One site that is part of my daily morning habit is Digg.  Digg is a pioneer of social news, where category toppers are determined by people social voting  submissions  up the ranks through “diggs”.  There is also the opportunity to leave comments on items you “digg”.

One morning this summer I visited the site and in their lifestyle section came across what was then one of the most popular items of the last 24 hours: a submitted link of the photo of the fat lady submerged that now tops this posting. The submitter had titled the photo link : Taking Lazy to New Depths. The submission  had already received 450 “diggs” by the time I came across it and it was quickly moving up the charts. When the dust had settled some time later it had received 1260 “diggs” and had been commented on 172 times.

What struck me personally about this submission was not the humor of the image itself (although it’s  pretty funny), or the wit of the tag line (although it is pretty witty). It was also not the numbers of Digg votes and comments it  recieved (although it was one of the top Diggs of that day)

What was, in the end,  truly remarkable for me about this particular image was also wholly and completely unexpected.  It was simply this: I was the photographer of this photo!

In February of 2009 I visited the Bahamas and scuba dived with the great dive shop Stuart’s Cove. During one dive I looked up to discover a small fleet of strange tourist-driven submersibles being dropped into the water. I was struck by the strangeness and humor of what was before me and took some pictures with my underwater camera. When I returned home I posted the  photos to a flickr site I had created for the scuba portion of the trip. I then sent the site link to friends and family and then thought nothing of it until months later when I randomly came across one of these photos on Digg .

Evidently, someone (actually this guy) found the photo by serendipity and posted it to digg.  My flickr shots were not set for private viewing,  so I was aware anyone could view the shots, but  I never considered the possibility that an image of mine could go viral. Even now all these months later I came across my photo on Tacky Racoons another eclectic site I visit from time to time. It referenced another site  joejet.com where it had discovered the photo.

The image has now taken on a life of its own, and I fully expect it is not the last time I will bump into this old friend online. I view this image now as my personal tribute sacrifice to the Viral Gods of Social Media. I think every marketer should try and humbly offer one up. Having something of mine go viral, albeit on a small scale, has given me a better appreciation of the phenomena. And it has got me thinking about how I can creatively  replicate the viral effect online again for my customers — stayed tuned. It ain’t over till the fat lady sings.

With this being Halloween eve, I thought I would use some dark gallows humor to tackle a question that weighs somewhat heavily on many a B2B marketer’s mind these days: Is traditional print marketing dead? Does it still have any meaningful relevance or value in the burgeoning internet marketing era?

As anyone knows who follows anything and everything related to B2B marketing online: friends and supporters of print marketing appear few and far between these days. Everywhere it seems, print advertising and its companions in traditional outbound marketing like direct mail, telemarketing, PR, tradeshows  TV/Radio are being derided and dismissed as passé.

On their blogs and twitter feeds many of the B2B marketing intelligentsia have taken the choices offered by traditional and online marketing and recast them on a larger stage as an epic B2B confrontation between the enlightened Forces of Light (aka ”inbound marketing”  or “permission marketing” ) and the ignorant Forces of Darkness (aka “outbound marketing” or “interuption marketing’)

If you just went by discussions in the B2B marketing blogosphere you’d certainly be under the impression that print marketing is on life support, or in its final death throws. “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated” is what Mark Twain wrote in response to seeing his own obituary in the New York Journal in 1897. And I am here to speak for the silent majority of print affectionados and proclaim that reports on the death of print marketing are greatly exaggerated as well .

Like the classic Hollywood Zombie, print marketing simply refuses to lay down and die as so many seem to expect. With every attack against it; with every kick, punch and fall to the ground, print marketing seems to takes the blows in stride, rise up in defiance and live for another day serving the ongoing needs of B2B marketers. Print is still a meaningful, effective and relevant method for launching new products,  building brands and reaching all segments of your targeted B2B audiences be it ”old school” or “new school.”

In fact, one report suggests that young adults actually prefer offline to online sources for marketing offers: ”Six years after the launch of Facebook, North American consumers in the valued 18-34 year-old demographic prefer by a wide margin to learn about marketing offers via postal mail and newspapers rather than online sources such as social media platforms, according to national survey research from ICOM, a division of Epsilon Targeting.

Another recent survey report by emarketer confirms that traditional outbound prospecting still produces the most qualified leads for US B2B sales reps.

As a young marketing exec. during height of the dotcom boom I recall the dire predictions that were being made then about print’s rapid obsolescence. Fast forward a decade later and we are still far from a paperless society.  And everywhere we look we are still being inundated offline with advertising messages.

But that is not to say that I do not recognize the immense value of  inbound marketing and social media in finding and nurturing quality leads. Far from it. I have always been a strong and passionate advocate of  internet marketing and its ability to produce quality real-time  metrics and analytics on campaigns and website efforts.  But I plainly differ from the  B2B groupthink that says you can’t be a true disciple of inbound marketing without denouncing traditional  print marketing’s effectiveness.

To put this current inbound/outbound marketing debate in the broadest  context possible, it is perhaps worthwhile to revisit the history of advertising and gain some proper perspective. If we start in the late 17th century when ads first started to appear in weekly newspapers in England and then look ahead at all the advertising platforms that came into being in the decades and centuries that followed, we arrive at a surprising realization: all the major advertising mediums that were developed over the past 200 years are still with us today! I am thinking about posters, flyers, newpaper ads, magazine ads, direct mail, radio ads, billboards, movie ads,  TV commercials, internet ads, mobile advertising.  Not one major traditional or new marketing media has yet died away. They still co-exist side-byside online and off.

To be sure the marketing media mix has changed, with previous marketing stars being relegated to supporting roles as newer  contenders emerge. But the players still all remain in the  mix albeit in different proportions. I am sure when radio became king in the 20s there were dire predictions then about the death of print advertising. Same thing when TV arrived in the 50s. What chance did radio advertising have up against TV’s alluring offering? Never mind Print!

And then with the internet’s arrival at the turn of the century, it seemed inevitable to many pundits that every marketing media that came  before it would now shrivel and die in the shadow of this new marketing  juggernaut. But that wasn’t the case 10 years ago and it is still not the case today.

Ironically I have noticed an interesting phenomena emerging with this recessionary economy: the same experts and gurus who once purely drank the inbound marketing Kool Aide and refused on principle to use traditional marketing techniques are now in fact quietly and under the radar cold calling  and using direct mail to reach out to untapped prospects.

There is not a week that goes by that I don’t get a call from a SEO expert or an inbound marketing consultant telling me why outbound marketing is a waste of time and money: that all my leads are waiting for me online to start nurturing.  They do not all appreciate the irony of  inbound marketing evangelists cold calling  the good old fashioned way to get new business.

But nothing perhaps better illustrates the life still left in print marketing then the remarkable direct mail revelation received  by KnowledgeBank,  a leading UK B2B marketing group and then blogged about by them with great insight and thinking that parallel my own.

Which is simply this: that for all the wizardry at their disposal online,  Google, the grand behemoth of inbound marketing still clearly recognizes what some of its most devoted groupies will not; that not all B2B marketing audiences can be reached by relying solely on online tactics.

As a B2B marketer you rarely can  afford to wait for prospects to first recognize they need what you offer and then come to you online in their search to learn more. Especially when you are trying to Cross the Chasm to reach and engage new markets. Sometimes it is more effective to go to where they live or work and “get in their face” with outbound marketing.  In Google’s case here they clearly recognized that the great pool of untapped potential Adwords users are not yet net or marketing savvy and are thus better targeted, educated and  incented offline with print marketing appeals and tactics. With that being said, if outbound marketing is good enough for Google, it’s still good enough for me.

“I don’t know who you are. I don’t know your company. I don’t know your company’s product. I don’t know what your company stands for. I don’t know your company’s customers. I don’t know your company’s record. I don’t know your company’s reputation. Now – what was it you wanted to sell me?” Moral: sales starts before your salesman calls.

This famous McGraw-Hill print ad comes right out of the Mad Men era. It first ran in Business Week in 1958, and it was named one of the 10 best ads of that year.  It was written by John Peebles, Creative Director at Adler Boschetto Peebles and Partners. It was created to promote the benefits of McGraw Hill’s line of B2B print publications. Most anyone who has ever entered into B2B marketing eventually discovers this ad and immediately understands its eternal marketing truths.

Despite the fact that the internet revolution has upturned traditional marketing and sales processes, this ad’s B2B insight is just as relevant, powerful and true as it was some 50 years ago. Today outbound marketing strategies using print advertising, PR, trade shows, direct mail, telemarketing, TV/radio  co-exist in synergy with modern inbound marketing strategies using websites, blogs, social networks and SEO/SEM/SMM/PPC.  And although a lot has changed in these last 50 years – at the end of the day getting a potential customer to develop awareness, interest and preference for your products and services before a first contact is made is still the heart and name of the game: the fundamentals of B2B marketing haven’t changed.

Amidst the endless reams of  B2B marketing jargon and banter that has grown along side the Marketing 2.0 explosion it is very easy today to lose site of this basic, decades old axiom.  At a recent American Marketing Association event the “man in the chair” ad was updated for modern B2B marketing realities to great effect.

The key transformation in this Marketing 2.0 era  is that the customer is no longer a passive information “couch potato” waiting for the salesman’s call to “pitch” his business. The customer is now much more in control of the B2B sales cycle reins : researching online, gathering insight and intelligence out of his social network, forming astute perceptions of a company by actively interacting with its brand touchpoints.

We as marketers now have at our disposal tools and capabilities that allow us to nurture leads by empowering the customer with everything they need to know about us as never before. And this ultimately allows a prospective customer to self-inform and self-qualify before any contact is ever initiated by either the buyer or the seller.

The old adage that even bad publicity is good publicity will be put to the test in the coming months at Gap store cash registers in malls across the globe as the dust settles on the customer backlash that followed  the companies’  rebranding “logotastrophy” and the subsequent announcement that  the company will be reverting  back to its iconic, original logo.

I am not so sure what this virtually universal mocking and rejection of the new corporate identity will do for the reputation of the branding firm responsible for its creation. The new logo was designed by Trey Laird and his firm Laird and Partners, who have worked as Gap’s creative group for years. By the looks of their website and client base these guys are no branding slouches.  So you have to wonder how they could have ended up so far off the mark on this. Was there no one at either organization astute or brave enough to say the patently obvious : the emperor has no clothes – this logo sucks!?  I can only imagine what Gap must have paid Laird  for their efforts. Further proof that bigger (and more expensive) is not always better.  (May I say with more than a little self -serving bias.)

The upside of this fiasco is that it unleashed a torrent of creative energy in the social media landscape with the seemingly overnight development of parody twitter sites, dozens of protest facebook campaigns and crowd-sourcing logo collaborations.

The cruelest and most succinct comment about the new logo that I came across simply read: Powerpoint ’97.  Ouch.

Not too long ago we had our own, more modest but successful kick at the can helping a company rebrand. The rebranded company, at the time known as Noble Trade, is one of the largest plumbing and heating supply wholesalers in Ontario. They had been acquired by RONA in 2007 and were now looking to rebrand as they rapidly grew and expanded.  They approached us because of our branding capabilities and our  B2B knowledge and experience working in the building and construction industry. We worked along side their marketing director  to come up with a new logo, brand identity, a shortened name and a new website, that were all, at its launch, well received internally and by customers alike  and has been serving them well ever since as they continue to grow their market share and reputation.

Here is our before and after for the company now known simply as Noble

This is one of those perfect convergences: innovative 1:1 marketing, state-of-the-art programming technology, great music and a glimpse into the future of the web viewing experience. It is  also a great collaborative effort between Montreal-based indie music sensation Arcade Fire, Google’s Chrome Experiments Team, and Chris Milk an award winning American music video director and photographer. The results is found at thewildernessdowntown.com The site is best viewed using Google’s Chrome Browser available here.

One of our capabilities is brand name development and we recently completed a successful brand renaming exercise for a “Cleantech” company now known as ENBALA.

Originally established in 2003 as Sempa Power Systems, ENBALA operates a “Smart Grid” services network that creates mutually beneficial links between large users of electricity and their regional Independent Electricity System Operator.  By connecting to ENBALA, large industrial, commercial and municipal consumers of electricity are financially rewarded for supporting quality and balance within their regional electricity system.

We were approached by their Marketing & Public Relations Manager and tasked with helping them develop a new corporate name that better reflected their brand and solution offering .

One of the reasons we had been selected for this challenge was that we had previously helped GE with a similar brand renaming exercise in the same “smart grid” sector that they operated in. We had helped GE’s Multilin division rebrand to become the larger more encompassing  GE Digital Energy

As part of our brand renaming efforts we first led a brand distillation session with Sempa Power’s management team to uncover their core brand attributes, which were then used as key building blocks in the ultimate creation of  a working list of potential company names that were then presented back to the Sempa team for consideration. We then facilitated a working session where these potential names were selectively shortlisted by Sempa management until finally ENBALA was chosen. The team felt it successfully captured the “energy balance”  inherent in the company’s brand promise. For Kuhn the biggest challenge to overcome these days in brand name development is finding a name with an available .com address. It is becoming increasingly hard to find a good name where the domain name is not already taken. Fortunately that was not the case with  ENBALA