Category Archives: Personal

A collection of personal thoughts and stories

10 Things I Learned from Disney – #4: Details Make the Difference

PartnersstatueThere are a lot of theme parks in Southern California. The competition for Disneyland is tough. Yet, for over 50 years now, the pattern has been the same. People plan their vacation around Disneyland, spending 3 to 5 days at the park, and may add a day at one of the other parks – Universal, Knott’s or Magic Mountain. If you looked at the size of the theme park pie and the slice that Disney carves off, the imbalance would be remarkable. Why does Disney suck up over 80 cents of every theme park dollar spent in the region?

It’s not the rides. Universal’s rides are probably more technically impressive. Magic Mountain and Knott’s certainly has more thrilling rides. Disney’s biggest coaster, California Screamin’, is a rather mild ride for a coaster fanatic (which I am).

I believe there are several reasons, and I’ll try to deal with them in individual posts. Today, I want to talk about attention to detail.

The Hotchkiss Detail Obsessive Guide to Disneyland

My family has been to Disneyland at least 6 times. People hate visiting the park with us because we have routines (others are less kind and call them rituals, or cult-like behavior) that have to be adhered to. It’s important which side of the train station you enter onto Main Street on. And you don’t rush past the circle at the top of the street. You spend a few minutes lingering and drinking in the atmosphere. You either stroll (never rush) down main street or take the horse drawn tram. You may stop at the Blue Ribbon Bakery for a coffee. You make your way to the Partners statue at the center of the park for a few minutes with Walt and Mickey and while you’re there, pay particular attention to the flowers planted around them. Take note, because they may be completely different tomorrow. From the center in front of the Castle, we then veer to the left, usually ambling through Adventureland and head towards New Orleans Square because the first ride has to be (this is non-negotiable) Pirates of the Caribbean.

Pirates is one of our favorite rides, earning it’s place as a Hotchkiss Tradition. And it’s not because it’s thrilling (it’s not) or technically amazing (although it may have been with the ride debuted in 1967). It’s because the attention to detail on this ride is simply amazing. It’s the last ride that Walt himself personally oversaw the design of. Everything has been thought through, down to the smallest scar, gold doubloon or cobweb. And that is the Disney difference. You won’t find that fanatic attention to detail in Universal, Knott’s or Magic Mountain. It’s a Disney hallmark.

It’s What You Do Between the Rides that Counts

Disney knows that in between the momentary jolts of adrenaline, it’s the details that build an experience worthy of a 3 or 4 day investment of your family’s time. Disneyland has this down in spades. Each square foot is jammed with amazing detail, carefully crafted and maintained to add to the experience. And I’m not even talking the obscure Disney-mania touches like Hidden Mickies. I’m talking about carefully planned sight lines, well placed benches, meticulously groomed greenery and the architectural detail on buildings, to say nothing of the imagination fuelling touches found in rides like Splash Mountain, Peter Pan, the Haunted Mansion and Indiana Jones. The competition cut corners. Walt absolutely forbid that in the making of Disneyland.

The post-Walt Disney Parks have struggled with this. We’ve been going to Disneyland for over 20 years now, and the overall look of the park hasn’t changed much. Toontown was added and a few new rides have debuted, but 50 years of planning and development have created an almost perfect entertainment experience. Major overhauls aren’t needed. The same can’t be said for Disney’s California Adventure. Disney is currently overhauling huge sections of the park because the same detailed magic was missing. Visitors treat California Adventure more like a typical theme park, rushing from major attraction to major attraction without lingering to enjoy the experience on the way. Of all the rides in California Adventure, the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror is one of the few engineered to the same standards of detail that you’ll find in the earlier rides. But this legacy of detail isn’t found so much in the rides, but rather the transition zones between the rides. It’s here where the acid test of detail is really found. It’s detail that keeps crowds amused while they’re waiting in line. It’s detail that keeps them from feeling like cattle, shunted from one chute to the next.

Most Skip the Details, Disney Doesn’t

So what’s the takeaway? Disney’s eye for detail came from an absolute certainty about what his visitor’s wanted and an iron-willed determination to deliver that without any compromise. Every last element of the visitor experience was considered and planned for. Every detail you see in Disneyland had a purpose – to make the visitor happy.

I think too many corporations rush past the details when it comes to the experiences of their customers. It’s because details take time. They’re hard work. You can get lost in a forest of detail. And obsessing over detail just doesn’t seem that profitable. In fact, if you get lost in the wrong details, it can be sure death for a corporation. But yet, details make the difference for Disney. Why? How does Disney avoid the trap of paying attention to the wrong details? They know which details are important because they take the time to understand what is important to their visitors. They spend a lot of time thinking about how visitors perceive and interact with those details. This is a legacy from Walt. It comes from a leader that obsesses about details.

Apple and the User Experience: A Lesson Learned

iPad-gallery-books1Another example of attention to detail is Apple. They obsess about the user experience. I recently watched someone demo their new iPad. You know what was one of the first things he showed me? How the iPad mimicked the look of turning an actual physical page in a book. Depending on where you place your finger on the page, the page itself curls up appropriately. It’s a silly little detail, but it was important in creating a Wow experience for this new owner. And it’s something that stood out to me as one reason why, eventually, I have to get an iPad. It’s a feature that probably took an absolutely silly number of hours of programming to implement but it was important to Apple because it was important to users.

Detail can differentiate you from the competition. It adds a premium to the value you provide. It tells the customer that you value them as users (or visitors), not just as another wallet to be emptied.

Next Week in Captiva: Shaking Things Up, TED-style

First published April 8, 2010 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Today you sit there, an audience spread across the digital marketing landscape, scraping together a few precious moments on your daily calendar to read this column. Next week I hope you’ll all be basking in the sunshine of Captiva Island, Fla., your cranium brimming over with tidbits and brain-bombs about search and the industry we toil in. The Google-gods willing and major algorithmic overhauls aside, we can all get away from the daily grind long enough to step back and take a look at where this whole thing might be going.

A Summit Three Years in the Making

I’ve been fortunate to work with MediaPost to help program the Search Insider Summit for the past five shows (I think, the brain’s a little numb at this point). Over time we’ve refined and tweaked to the point where we had a pretty smooth-running operation. This time, however, I decided to change all that. I’ve never been a particularly loyal adherent to the maxim: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. I believe in mixing stuff up on a pretty regular basis. In this case, the catalyst for change was a chance to attend the TEDActive conference this spring.

I loved how TED managed to lodge particularly toothsome concepts in my brain (at a breathlessly unrelenting pace, to be honest) and then throw me loose amongst the TED-sters (yes, it is a little cult-like) to try to digest in my limited downtime.

The resulting conversations were nothing short of amazing. The first day at lunch, I was sharing a picnic basket with five other strangers and eavesdropping on a conversation happening beside me. The topic? The role of mirror neurons in determining the vicarious enjoyment on thrill rides at an amusement park. I didn’t catch names at first, but one speaker owned an amusement part in New Jersey, and the other was a professor of neuroscience at UC Irvine.

This past week, as I was zipping past TV channels, I saw a familiar face. There was my neuroscience prof! He was appearing as himself on the crime drama “Criminal Minds.” He just happens to be one Dr. James Fallon, a world-renowned expert on the psychology and neurology of psychopaths! Now, where else could you just happen on a conversation like that?

The Convergence of Conversations

That was the spirit I wanted to create at Captiva (minus the psychopathic stuff).  Like TED, we have an atmosphere that invites conversations. The informal and intimate atmosphere is conducive to brainstorming. And this time, I wanted to borrow from the TED concept and transition what happens up on stage to be more forward-looking and strategic in nature. I wanted to give more people a chance to share their thoughts, so I borrowed the TED format of a mix of 18-minute and five-minute (TED actually limits to three-minutes) talks. Plus, we retained unique Search Insider traditions like our roundtable break-out sessions.

The challenge I threw at presenters was to crystal-ball the question: Where is search going from here? I divided the question into five parts: the core technology, the user experience, the marketing strategies, the search marketing industry and the data and tools. Then, with the help of our advisory board (Gian Fulgoni – Comscore, John Nicoletti – Google, Stefan Weitz – Microsoft, Chris Copeland – GroupM and Frank Lee – The Search Agency) we created a 3-day agenda from the pitches we received. It’s promising to be a fascinating summit. And for good measure, we’re bringing Ball State University back to re-envision Google through Gen-Next eyes.

It was a little hairy, taking a tried-and-true format and reinventing it, but I think you’ll be pleased with the results. See you soon in Captiva!

10 Things I Learned from Disney – #3: Leadership Matters…a Lot!

walt-and-roy-01How many companies today are run by caretakers? How many of the Fortune 500 are run by CEO’s who are really just thinly disguised accountants?

The Leader of a company determines the heart and soul of that company. If you run the company by your profit and loss statements, you’ll end up with a fiscally responsible corporation that will slowly screw itself into the ground. If you have a reckless leader, you’ll flame and burn in spectacular style. Somewhere in between the extremes is where you have to live

Walt Disney was not overly concerned by fiscal responsibility. That was Roy, his brother’s job. Walt drove the company by embracing risk. Roy lost his hair by trying to balance Walt’s enthusiasm.

Risk is the fuel that drives the future. And risk is risk. It can only be calculated up to a certain point. After that, you have to close your eyes and jump. Walt jumped again, and again, and again, each with spectacular style.

1923 – Walt moved to Hollywood from Kansas City with a short film called Alice’s Wonderland that he hoped would net him a distribution contract. The film was pretty much all Walt had. He managed to secure a contract and teetered on the edge of bankruptcy for 4 years. And just when he looked like he had a winner, in a new cartoon character called Oswald the Rabbit, the distributor stole both the rights and the animators, shutting Walt out.

1928 – After losing Oswald, Walt started from scratch with Mickey Mouse. But he only created two cartoons with the new character before deciding to risk it all with the first sound cartoon. The struggling studio dumped everything they had into the cartoon, Steamboat Willie. Luckily, Walt’s gamble paid off. Mickey was a hit.

1937 – Building on the success of Steamboat Willie, Disney turned out a series of profitable Mickey Mouse cartoons, and added the Silly Symphony series, netting himself a number of Academy Awards in the process for pushing the boundaries of animation technology and art. but Walt soon found a new dream worthy of risk – the first full length animated movie. It what was quickly becoming predictable behaviour for Walt, he risked all their profits from the animated shorts on Snow White. And, as before, it was a phenomenal success, becoming the highest grossing movie until Gone with the Wind bumped it from it’s perch.

In it’s following releases, Disney struggled with finding the right balance between budget and profitability. The war restricted access to foreign markets so profits relied on domestic audiences. Walt continued to push the envelope of what was possible with animation in Disney’s next two releases, Pinocchio and Fantasia. This came at a cost – a budget that meant these films didn’t break even until decades after their debut (thanks to eventual release on VHS and DVD). Walt continually tried to find the right balance between artistic accomplishment and profitability, eventually finding a happy middle ground with classics like Bambi, Cinderella and Mary Poppins (another technical and artistic milestone). It’s amazing to consider how quickly animation progressed, from the primitiveness of Steamboat Willie to the polished art of Show White in just 9 short years.

In the interim Walt also explored TV and live action features, finding significant success in both. Finally, it seemed, Disney had found the groove that led to sustained profitability. Almost any other leader would cling to this groove for dear life, building up the bank account and enjoying the rewards that come with success. Not Walt.

1955 – Walt got restless when he stayed in one place too long. he became bored with incremental improvement, no matter how profitable it proved to be. Walt thrived on risk and new, monumental challenges. And so, he looked for a new one. Walt was 54 years old and had been running Disney, in one form or another, for 35 years. By any measure you might want to apply, he was successful. And he risked all this, everything, on a new dream – an entertainment park. Disneyland represented Walt’s biggest roll of the dice yet, because he had everything to lose.

This restlessness and desire to push the limits epitomized the Disney company for the first 45 years of its history. Walt and the company were really one and the same. His leadership determined the soul of the company. When he died of lung cancer at the age of 66, he left a hole in the heart of Disney that took years to mend (and some might say Walt was never successfully replaced). Never let it be said that one person does not determine the direction of a huge corporation. Disney was testament to the fact that a single person’s vision and ideals can shape and guide a company for decades. This is not the job for a caretaker or bean counter. This is a job for someone who can grasp the impossible and shape the future.

Search May Not be Sexy Anymore, But It Pays the Bills

First published August 5, 2010 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Is it just me, or is search getting boring? It’s been months since we’ve had a good, ruckus-raising tidbit to get our teeth into. The Bing-Yahoo integration? That’s the best you can do? Yawn.

Is it me…

I suspect that it is, in part anyway, me. To be honest, I haven’t been much of a “Search Insider” lately. In the past few months, precious little of my time has been spent pondering the industry. I’m way behind on industry news and haven’t attended a search conference or event for a few months. My days have been full with the busy-ness of running a business. I’ve had other things on my mind.

My first Search Insider column ran six years ago and since then, I’ve written 276 columns, counting this one.  That’s a little over 220,000 words — most of them at least tangentially relevant to search. Perhaps the well has just run dry.

Or is it search?

But then again, perhaps it’s the industry.  Maybe search just isn’t that sexy anymore. Remember the day when Google was going to change the world? Remember how marketers just couldn’t wrap their heads around this “search” thing? Back then, I could get righteously indignant and bang out a column wondering when the world would “get” how important this it. But now, they’ve got it. It seems silly to proselytize search now that Google has become a verb. Search has come, has conquered, and we’ve all moved on. Again…yawn.

Sure, there are always new search entries in the marketplace, but when’s the last time somebody used the words Google Killer? Is it because Google is invincible, or is it just that we really don’t care anymore? Even Aaron Goldman, who surely has squatter’s rights on “Google Killer,” hasn’t squeezed it into a column since last May. In the last year, only three Search Insider columns have used the term. When we Insiders stop caring about the world after Google, imagine how disinterested the rest of the population must be.

Search and the Oxygen Cycle

As I watch my family’s day-to-day routines unwind, I realize that search is like air. We use it without thinking about it. We just accept it. And so, the industry that lies behind the query box falls into the same category as the biochemical process that ensures we have oxygen. I don’t care how it works, as long as it does work.

So, maybe search is boring. Maybe it’s lost its luster, ceasing to be a bright shiny object. Maybe the cool people have all moved on to social media and mobile, where they attend conferences wearing block logoed T-shirts, sipping free mimosas and talking about how no one gets Foursquare. It’s the same group you used to see at the search shows, waiting to board the bus to the Google Dance.

But I can’t help thinking that perhaps this is a good thing. You can only be cool for so long. Sooner or later, you have to grow up and do some real business. It’s the difference between a bar pick-up and a marriage. Social might be sexy, but search pays the bills and puts food on the table.

On second thought, maybe a little diversion is just what the doctor ordered. Look over here, all you journalists and financial analysts! Look at what’s happening where the really cool people play. Ooh and aah at these social widgets and nifty apps. Meanwhile, we search people will drudge along, cranking out a few more billion in search revenues.

How and Why I Blog

i-have-nothing-to-sayMy last post on the psychology of entertainment forced me to ask myself an important question: why the hell do I blog anyway? I thought it might be helpful to work this out in the full transparency of a blog post. As I find the answer for myself, perhaps someone else will find it useful as well.

Talking to Myself…Online

For me, my blog is a little more structured exercise than talking to myself. It helps me take some of the ideas I’m exposed to and give them an intellectual workout. I suppose at first I intended my blog to be a promotional vehicle but as I started to blog, I realized that provided poor motivation to continue to blog. I don’t really structure my blog posts to be rapidly disseminated. As I said before, I break pretty much all of Guy Kawasaki’s rules for successful blogging. But then, Guy doesn’t blog the same way I do. It doesn’t serve the same purpose. For Guy, blogging is a broadcast channel. For me, it’s an intellectual “grist mill” that allows me to pull ideas together in new combinations.

Truth be told, I don’t really have a structure that I follow when blogging. I sit down and start typing about whatever happens to be on my mind that day. I try to set an hour aside a day, but often I find the clock running on to two hours and I reluctantly have to pull myself away and get to the rest of my daily to do’s. Worse, often I get on a track that’s impossible to cover in a single post. For example, a single comment on a single post got me wondering about the psychology of entertainment and that resulted in a string of 14 posts that’s still going on. When this happens, it’s very difficult to know where to end each post.

Educational Multitasking

Also, when I blog, I simultaneously learn. I bounce back and forth between TextEdit (using Word for blogging causes no end of headaches when importing into my blogging platform) and Google, exploring threads and “berrypicking” ideas. Often, I don’t have enough time to search for empirical backing. If an idea appears interesting, it gets thrown in with a link. My blog is a place to speculate in the open air, not to worry about making each post bullet proof. I try to make sure everything passes my personal “gut test” but I expect my readers to call me on concepts that are obviously off-base.

My motivation for blogging is simple: I have ideas that I want to share, both mine and other ones that I run into. I try to be fair when I am presenting the ideas of others, providing links to the original source. I find the challenge of translating these ideas into words very healthy. It helps me internalize them, bringing them into my own perspective. I tend to favour academic work that borders on marketing. I’m become an armchair neurologist, psychologist and sociologist. The common link I look for is the “why” in human behaviour.

For me, blogging is a means to an end. I know other authors, including Chris Anderson, Seth Godin and John Battelle, work their book ideas out through their blog. I suspect I’m following the same path. After my first book which came out last year, I already have several ideas jostling for their place in the queue. The blog allows me to jump back and forth between these ideas, picking up a thread and pursuing it, then dropping it for another. I suspect blogging is the attention deficit approach to book research. The benefit, I hope, is that in the process, you expose potential readers to your thoughts, leading to a very healthy and helpful vetting before anything actually makes it to paper.

There’s a Reason It’s Called Out of My “Gord”…

I also don’t consider my own blog as a promotional vehicle for my company, Enquiro. There is inevitable overlap, and you can find my posts on our corporate blog, ask.enquiro.com, but the musings and thoughts belong to me, not Enquiro. We have a few bloggers in Enquiro and they are all finding their own voice. We take a very organic approach to this content creation, trusting that our shared passions will keep us somewhat aligned, rather than pushing editorial guidance down from above. Writing is much more rewarding and effective when you’re writing about something you care about. As the CEO and President of Enquiro, it’s natural that whatever I’m interested in will eventually find it’s way into the company’s corporate strategy in one form or another, but outofmygord.com is definitely not a corporate blog. The name (which I’m rather proud of, by the way) very much indicates what this blog is about, random thoughts that are bouncing around my cranium. Just like any given group of readers, some of my staff reads the blog every day, and others don’t. It’s not compulsory.

For me, the discipline of regular blogging, although difficult to maintain, has been very rewarding. If I could spend all day blogging I would, but so far, I haven’t figured out a way to keep the wolves from the door through blogging alone. Also, although my visitor stats have been consistently climbing, I have little idea who actually reads my blog. My readership, I suspect (at least based on the comments that get submitted) includes a number of SEO’s looking for backlinks. If you’re one of them, here’s the drill. I look at all feedback, sort out the obvious spam, and post if a comment looks thoughtful and adds to the conversation, even (in some cases) if it includes a fairly subtle backlink. No, I don’t use no follow tags (yet) so I figure that if you go to the trouble of making an intelligent comment, I’ll repay you with a little link love.

Advice? Just Write, Often and Regularly…

If you’re looking for advice on blogging, I’m not sure there’s much I can give. There are certainly bloggers with a much more commercial approach than I have, and they have the visitor numbers to show for it. What I would say is that you need to post often. I try to do 5 posts a week, and I usually manage at least 4. If you approach blogging like I do, with no set agenda or editorial guidelines, it’s hard to know which posts will become popular and which ones will go virtually unnoticed. I’m the worst judge of this. My most popular posts are ones I would have never expected to go viral. And my favorite posts often seem to be read by me and me alone. But, if you keep cranking them out, day after day, I believe your audience will eventually find you. Traffic to my blog has increased about 6 times since I started becoming more regular in my posts.

Finally, I acknowledge that the findability of past posts is abysmal on my blog. I was going to reorganize the site, but I recently decided to migrate the contents to WordPress (which has proven to be a much bigger pain than I thought). I’m hoping the change of platform will allow me to do some retroactive categorization and organization.

Some Wisdom from Walt

For the next week or two, I’m going to be on a much needed spring vacation with my family. During that time, I’m going to try to keep up the posts, but expect them to be much shorter. And, in the spirit of the vacation (which is in Southern California) I’m going to share some of the lessons I learned from Disney, one of my favorite companies, and from Walt Disney (one of my personal heroes). After that, I’ll pick up the psychology of entertainment thread again and see where it goes from here.

10 Things I Learned from Disney – #2: Values are Non-Negotiable

Walt_young_featureWalt Disney’s values were forged in the hardscrabble reality of Kansas City, growing up in a family led by a father that never was quite able to grab success by the tail. Walt was a deeply spiritual individual who held the importance of American and Family values above all else. He spent the rest of his life pursuing an ideal – that of clean wholesome family entertainment. Walt was scrupulous about it. I suspect the adult movies that are now released through Disney’s production arm, Touchstone Films, would have earned a disapproving frown from Walt. Yet of all the major studios, Disney is still the one synonymous with family entertainment.

The normally affable Walt could quickly become contentious when his values came into debate. He drove the overall moral tone of Disney entertainment with an iron will. The door was open for technical and creative innovation, but heaven help the poor Disney employee who let their moral guard slip, even for an instant. It’s only very recently that Disney Park employees were allowed to have a beard, a mustache (ironic, considering Walt himself sported one) or sideburns. Walt felt facial hair detracted from the clean, wholesome image he wanted to maintain in his parks. And the classic Disney films each strove to be more than entertainment – they each carried a strong moral message, usually about the value of a strong family unit.

Whether or not you agreed with Walt’s highly idealistic views, you had to admire the ardor with which he defended them. Walt felt that a corporation without real values was a soulless organization without direction. And his values still live in Disney’s corporate values today:

Values Make Our Brands Stand Out

    * Innovation
          o We follow a strong tradition of innovation.

    * Quality
          o We strive to follow a high standard of excellence.
          o We maintain high-quality standards across all product categories.

    * Community
          o We create positive and inclusive ideas about families.
          o We provide entertainment experiences for all generations to share.

    * Storytelling
          o Every product tells a story.
          o Timeless and engaging stories delight and inspire.

    * Optimism
          o At The Walt Disney Company, entertainment is about hope, aspiration and positive resolutions.

    * Decency
          o We honor and respect the trust people place in us.
          o Our fun is about laughing at our experiences and ourselves.

Are they defended as strongly as they were when Walt was alive? I suspect not, yet it’s a testament to the man that for must of us, Disney and family values are synonymous.

Values are a highly personal thing. You might not subscribe to the same values that Walt did. But the fact is, values have to live at the heart of an organization. They breathe life into it and give it a purpose that’s not open to negotiation or compromise. They are the bearing points that can always be relied on. They stand above profit statements and quarterly earning reports. If they don’t, all you have is a bunch of people standing around trying to figure out the best way to make money. And there are better things in life than that.

The Spring Search Insider Summit: Where is Search Going?

First published March 11, 2010 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

In my last column, I talked about Steve Ballmer ruminating about the future of search. Steve isn’t the only guy thinking about this. A number of people I’ve talked to in the last few months have been pulling their crystal balls out and doing a little prognosticating about where searching as we know it might go in the future.

I think we (and by we, I mean anyone remotely connected to the search industry) all agree that we’re at the cusp of a sea-change in our world. Most everything we know will get swept along with this change: revenue models, our search experience, marketing strategies, the role of search agencies, the tools we use — and even the very platforms we use to launch our search.
One simply can’t overstate the importance of this. So, with another Search Insider Summit rapidly approaching, the folks at MediaPost and I have decided to turn the entire summit over to that one central question: Where is search going?

Those of you who have ever attended a Search Insider Summit know the basic premise: spirit a number of the smartest minds in search away to a fabulous location and let them share ideas for three-and-a-half packed days of brainstorming. This time around, on lovely Captiva Island in Florida, I want the future of search to be on the tips of everyone’s tongues.

And that’s where I need some help. I need passionate and compelling presenters who can “Captiva-te” our audience with their vision of where search is going. I’m looking for pitches around the central question. I’ve switched it up a little this time, dividing the primary question into six different sessions:

Where is the Core Technology Going? The engine that drives search is undergoing some significant tweaking, both in the labs of Microsoft and Google and in countless start-ups around the globe. How is the fundamental function of indexing and organizing information evolving?

Where is the User Interface Going? What will our search engines of the future look like? What is the next flavor of the 10 blue links? How will we query — and when we do, what will the results look like?

Where is the Search Experience Going? Already, we launch our searches from more and more places: mobile devices, entertainment screens, tablets and desktops. And the explosion of screens means the diversity will only continue to grow. How will the very act of searching change for us? And what will it mean for those of us doing the searching?

Where is Search Marketing Going? As search changes, the ways we use it as a marketing channel must also change. How will we adapt to the changing user experience and interface? What will our touch points with prospects who are searching for information look like in the future?

Where is the Search Marketing Industry Going? At past summits, we’ve talked a lot about how the search marketing industry has to change and adapt. Despite its rapid adoption and tremendous success, the search marketing industry is still in its relative infancy. Will stand-alone search agencies be part of the future marketing landscape? And if they are, what do we have to start learning to do — and what should we stop doing?

Where are Search Marketing Tools Going? One of the knocks against search is its lack of scalability. Tools have consistently scrambled to keep up with the changes and have made great strides in assisting the search marketer in keeping track of what is, by necessity, a tremendously granular management task. But what will those tools look like in the future?

If any of the above topics strike your passion, let us know. Send us a speaking pitch in the following format:

Introduction: One (short) sentence summarizing your pitch, along with the session you believe it fits into.

Description: No more than 300 words giving us more detail about what you want to speak about.

About Yourself: A little bit about you and why you’d make a compelling presenter on the Search Insider Summit stage.

Send all this along to my email: gord@enquiro.com and please cc my assistant: denise@enquiro.com. Time is short, so if you’re interested, please get your pitches in by next Tuesday.

10 Things I Learned from Disney – #1: Dreams Make a Difference

waltdisneyMy friend and fellow Search Insider columnist, Aaron Goldman, has gained a lot of mileage from one column. Sometime ago, he wrote a column entitled “Everything I Need to Know about Marketing I Learned from Google”. Since then, he’s managed to stretch that out into dozens of columns and an upcoming book. For the next few weeks, I’d like to take inspiration from Aaron and share a few things that Disney has taught me. I don’t expect to get nearly the same mileage that Aaron did (possibly because I don’t have the same attention span) but it’s certainly not because Disney is any less inspirational than Google. For me, Disney presents one of the great corporate histories of the 20th century and Walt has always been one of my personal heroes. But, I will restrict myself to 10 blog posts, one for each of the lessons that Disney has taught me about life and business success. So, let’s start with Lesson One:

Dreams Make a Difference

Walt Disney was possibly the biggest dreamer of the 20th century. Walt always had his gaze firmly focused not the future, quickly moving on from past successes. The next “thing” was always the most important “thing.”  He knew if you spent too much time patting yourself on the back, you’d have your sights focused on where you’ve been, not where you’re going.

In behavioural economics, there’s a saying, “Loss looms larger than gain.” Most of us, faced with a decision of protecting what we have vs. risking it all for a potential future gain tend to circle the wagons and protect the piggy bank. Not Walt. Walt drove his brother Roy crazy by constantly betting it all on a bigger and better dream. For much of it’s history, Disney rode a roller coaster that came frighteningly close to bankruptcy on more than one occasion.

Walt knew that dreams are the fuel that drive us forward. Dreams that focus forward can be achieved with passion and purpose. Dreams that look backward are just one step away from regret. We can do nothing about the past, but we can do something about the future.

Walt was much more than a dreamer, however. Unrealized dreams have not influence on the world beyond the holder of the dream. And that was the magic of Walt. Somehow, he was able to make dreams come true. He knew how to sell dreams, infusing them in others and thereby inspiring them. His dreams were highly contagious, spreading from him (and eventually his brother) through his company outwards to a circle of financiers and partners. Eventually, his dreams reached far enough to touch each one of us.

Disney has not dreamed quite as big or successfully since Walt’s passing, but it’s still a corporation that knows the power of a dream. It has a history of recognizing dreamers and providing the superstructure required to lift those dreams up to the heights.

In Disneyland there is a plaque that says, “It all started with a mouse.” But really, it started with a dream. Walt Disney knew how to take a dream and leverage it to move the world. Powerful stuff indeed!

My Interview with Jeremy Victor at B2B Bloggers

Last week, I had the opportunity to have my first “Twitter-view” with Jeremy Victor at B2B bloggers. Jeremy and I took a very quick tour through some of the territory I explored in my book, The BuyerSphere Project (free pdf available on our site, print version available at Amazon). Jeremy has edited the Tweets into a cohesive transcript.

Some of the areas we covered:

  • What is the BuyerSphere and Why Should We Map It?
  • Where are B2B Marketers on the Digital Marketing Adoption Curve?
  • What are the main challenges facing B2B buyers?
  • The irrationality of B2B purchasing
  • What is the Risk Gap?
  • The Need for Face-to-Face
  • The importance of a website as a Digital Asset
  • Are blogs more important that websites?

A Farewell to SEMPO

Today, the election for the new board of SEMPO is open. It’s a little bitter sweet for me. For the first time in 7 years, you won’t find my name on the ballot. I’ll be stepping down from the board and letting new blood take over.

I’ve been privileged to serve on the SEMPO board since 2003. Only Dana Todd and Kevin Lee, both founding members, have put in a longer tour of duty. In that time I’ve served as Chair of SEMPO for two years and have been the Research Chair, along with Kevin, for almost the entire time. I’ve seen SEMPO grow along with the industry to the point today where it has hundreds of members around the world. Not bad for an organization that started with a handful of search marketers meeting after the sessions had ended at an industry conference, looking to create a shared voice and gain a little more respect. I would say – mission accomplished!

But there is still so much more to do! I’ve had the opportunity to help the current executive start to define what SEMPO’s role could be in the future. The challenge, as it is with anything involving search, is trying to define the scope of what constitutes our reach. Search in the last decade has morphed and seeped into every aspect of our lives. Defining the role of an organization that tries to wrap it’s arms around that has been an ongoing challenge. And this is a challenge that isn’t going to get any easier.

SEMPO has never had a dearth of aspiration. We have dreamed big! We have consistently punched above our weight. We have ridden over rough patches of controversy and dissension. SEM’s are an outspoken lot. Most have us have heard first hand the uproar that ensues when you get a bunch of search marketers in the same room. Imagine, then, the challenge of trying to be the global voice for those loud, passionate, stubborn and thoroughly glorious marketers. Passion has infused SEMPO from day one, from the drive of Barbara Coll to the amazing and ongoing dedication of SEMPO leaders including Dana Todd, Kevin Lee, Jeff Pruitt, Massimo Burgio, Chris Boggs, Bill Hunt, Sara Houlobek and many others. I have been privileged and humbled to serve on the board with all of them. They will always be my mentors and friends. We have been on an amazing journey.

This is not the place for a list of the accomplishments of SEMPO. This is just a place for me to say thank you for the opportunity. And in offering thank yous, I would be remiss if I did not include some of SEMPO’s amazing administrative support team at Virtual, Inc, especially Amanda Pierce, Paula Hunter and a man I hope I can always call friend, Andy Freed. There are others, but those are the ones that I have spent the most time with.

In an industry that’s a fractious and quick to criticize as this one is, it’s always easy to point blame. It’s much harder to stop bitching long enough to dig in and and do something about it. I can tell you from experience, SEMPO boards have always had the interest of the industry firmly at the core of what they do. Not one member I have ever served with has been in it for their own glorification or interests. Not one. Because after 7 years on the board, I can tell you there are much easier ways to grab the spotlight than to serve on SEMPO’s board. The amount of dedication and commitment required is substantial, and, at the executive level, nothing short of monumental. We, each one of us, love this industry and are here to push it forward. We have struggled with the best way to do that, given that our dreams are consistently much bigger than our resources, but our motivations have never been in question.

I have my own goals and plans for the coming few years and knew it was time to step down, both for my sake and for the sake of the organization. As tough as it is for me to personally turn this corner, I know it’s the right path to take. When you cast your vote, I ask you to do so with careful consideration. We need a strong and healthy SEMPO, because the organization has provided a respected voice for this industry. Search marketing now has a global footprint and that voice has to continue to be heard. It has to be heard from Beijing and Oslo, from Milan and Buenos Aires, from Osaka and Sydney. And it has to be heard from Phoenix, Denver, Chicago, San Francisco, New York, Toronto, Vancouver and Seattle

I like the saying Farewell, as it really embodies my wish for SEMPO. Fare well in the future. Continue to Dream and Do. Continue to be passionate. Continue to talk, connect and be heard.

I’ll miss you.