Flesher Marketing Infrastructures

Dash away, dash away, dash away all?

Jan Flesher — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 18:33:15 +0000

Dashboards. Not for your car but for Social Media. They seem to be a perplxing subject for some and many are overwhelmed by the amount of data that would flow in front of their eyes if they used one.

I don’t have all the answers by any means, though I have been researching the subject over the past year. If you have a moment (more like 4 minutes), follow the link below, take a short survey and let me know how you use or don’t use social media dashboards. I am trying to gather some basic usage information to find the “state of the industry” when it comes to using social media dashboards.

The 2012 SMPS Southern Regional Conference in in San Antonio this January is where the survey findings will be presented.

So, as a freind of mine says, “Help a girl out!” Click here to take the survey: Social Media Dashboard Survey

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Summertime Reds

Jan Flesher — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 16:24:46 +0000

Summertime reds are the opposite of summertime blues. I have connected, and reconnected, with some great firms in the past 6 weeks. And I am truly enjoying the puzzles that come from working with different firms and their idiosyncrasies.

It’s curious to me that many marketing seminars, presentations, etc. purport explicit ways of “how to do” blank. Often I witness firms attempting to implement these “how to’s” without adjusting them to their culture, usiness or marketing strategies.

One-size-fits-all, cookie-cutter solutions are painful and costly to businesses that invest in the myth that is spun around such solutions. It’s a cautionary tale I tell all my clients. You wouldn’t buy the latest, coolest running shoes that don’t really fit all that well and then just suffer through your morning run? So why would you buy into a solution that isn’t customizable or flexible enough to fit your firm?

Theoretical solutions are where we all start, but when it comes down to practicality of implementation and nailing down precisely how it’ll help the firm, the abyss looms large. It’s exciting to help clients bypass the abyss and witness them turning their summertime blues into reds!

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Back In The Saddle Again

Jan Flesher — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 22:03:22 +0000

Ok, so taking a month off didn’t really work out. It was a good thought, but when you are trying to restart your consulting practice, time off isn’t really possible.

As you may have noticed, jflesher.com is up and running. It’s still a work in progress though it has the basic info to understand that I am again available to help organizations operationalize their marketing efforts through the use of various strategies, tactics and tools.

I’m excited by the opportunities ahead. I would love to know your thoughts on the direction professional services marketing is taking now that some folks think the economy is “recovering”. Drop a note and let me know.

It’s great to be back!

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Charging the Stupidity Tax – Joshua Gans – The Conversation – Harvard Business Review

Jan Flesher — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 22:00:00 +0000

If you have a smartphone and have traveled internationally, you are likely aware of the charges you might pay for data roaming. And if you didn’t know about them before your trip, you certainly became aware of them the first time you traveled. For normal use, those charges can amount to an extra $1,000 to your phone bill after only a few days.

In a provocative piece, economist David Levine suggests that this is a deliberate strategy on the part of firms to, for want of a better phrase, tax stupidity.

You can limit the roaming charges — but you need to be aware of the options before you can do so. You can turn off data roaming (although apparently 40% of travelers do not), you can purchase some data from your carrier (for just 50MB AT&T charges you $60 with some hefty overcharges if you exceed that), or you can purchase an unlocked phone and insert a foreign SIM (Google offers its Nexus One phone that way or you can buy an iPhone outside the U.S. but these options will involve higher upfront costs). If you are not aware of these options, or you don’t pursue them (i.e., you are stupid, to continue our parlance), you pay a large tax.

Why would firms want to do this? If consumers are aware of the charges, they’ll avoid them. So the only revenue you earn is from disgruntled consumers — hardly an attractive option. Of course, if you have a monopoly, disgruntled consumers are less of a problem. But most firms don’t have a monopoly. There are many other instances where we can observe the stupidity tax in action — even in competitive markets. If you have ever had to use a hotel phone for a long-distance call, you surely remember the outrageous fees. Or, if you have ever struggled to compare the prices of a 30-roll and an 8-roll pack of toilet paper when supermarkets don’t tell you the unit price, then you face a tax on your numeracy. And, finally, think about all those coupons for rebates you receive but never use.

In the hotel phone case, it is the desperate who are being exploited. In the supermarket case, the “cost” to consumers is small and so a lack of awareness can persist. And in the rebate case, firms bank on earning more who just do not have the time or organization to claim a rebate (tip of the hat to Dilbert).

But the cell phone roaming charges are on a different scale. In his blog post, Levine argued that monopoly was the problem. But it’s not monopoly in terms of your U.S. carrier. The villain here is the carrier you roam on internationally. Put simply, if you travel to Europe with your AT&T iPhone and roam on T-Mobile, the carrier does not have to worry about losing you as a customer.

Here’s the calculus carriers use to assess charges to their foreign roaming users. Suppose one charged $60 for 50MB of use. Then it would have to attract 12 or so such paying customers for every stupid customer who might have roamed at a $15 per MB charge. So what carriers who charge exorbitant prices for roaming are saying is that they believe that there is one stupid (and rich) traveler for every 12 travelers out there. The moral being that someone out there is placing a somewhat insulting bet on the probability that you are stupid. And if you pay those charges, they win that bet.

Joshua Gans is a professor of economics at Melbourne Business School and a visiting scholar at Harvard University.

via blogs.hbr.org

Wow, this article reminds me of the discussion I have frequently regarding how we market quality services and how much more people actually pay for poor service in the long run. Makes my head hurt.

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Who Knew Federal Forms Were So Popular?

Jan Flesher — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 21:29:44 +0000

SMPS Seattle held a panel discussion on working with the Federal government and their SF330 forms. Two panel members were AEC industry experts and two were federal government representatives. Coughlin Porter Lundeen hosted the event for SMPS and there were nearly 70 people in attendance!

If you have ever filled our ANY Federal forms, you know they are boring. These days, after a few billion dollars in Federal money was pumped into the economy, they are more popular than ever before. Personally I like the fact that I was able to wish numerous people a Happy New Year who I might not have seen for several more months into the new year.

So congrats Seattle SMPS for doing a bang-up job on this topic. I look forward to see what you come up with next.

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Finally Some Brain Food – Part 1

Jan Flesher — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 19:53:00 +0000

For the past two days I have been listening in (watching sometimes) on a conference. And the really nice thing is that I could do it from my desk while multi-tasking on simple minded things that would usually annoy the crap out of me. Ah, technology.

The conference was in Vegas and put on by SAS, called “Innovate. Optimize. Transform.” I stumbled upon the conference through Tweets from Chris Brogan (@chrisbrogan) and Charlene Li (@charleneli) – two people I highly recommend following if you are not already. They spoke on a panel with David Meerman Scott about the business value of social media. More on this later.

The first day on this conference was chocked full of food for the brain. Economists Linda Yueh and Dr. Sung Won Sohn spoke on the economy and globalization and put it into terms and scenarios even a knob like me could grasp. The transcript of the conversation can be found here http://blogs.sas.com/sascom/index.php?/archives/824-Moving-the-global-economy-out-of-neutral.html. In fact, I will now be watching/listening very closely to the Fed announcements next week and with luck, have a better understanding of what may happen next.

Then the keynote, Vijay Govindarajan, spoke on turning strategy into innovation. Interlaced with humor, his differentiation of strategy and tactics resonated with me. I believe I can adapt his differentiation methodology/theory to help our engineering firm gain new perspectives. Much can be gleaned from his blog as well (www.vijaygovindarajan.com).

Finally on day one, the executive viewpoint was brought forward through a panel from the host group SAS and its affiliate Accenture. Our engineering firm is not what I would call an analytic organization, but these three leaders were remarkably enlightening in their simplistic, humble views on engaging their customers and staff. There were numerous pearls to be gathered.

Day two was just a intellectually stimulating as day one and just as applicable to my job of marketing professional services and how marketing can play a role in solidifying the business for the future. Stay tuned for Finally Some Brain Food – Part 2.

(tags: #AEC, #SMPS, Innovate, Optimize, Transform, SAS, differentiation)

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Grabbing a Piece of History

Jan Flesher — Sun, 10 Oct 2010 18:31:08 +0000

It has been a whirlwind over the past few weeks in Seattle’s efforts to get its waterfront redesign jump started. The project is big, complex and still missing one key piece – the tunnel design team. Those teams have to submit their proposals by the end of October. Once the tunnel design team is selected, all the design pieces will be ready to roll.

Our firm grabbed a piece of this once-in-a-lifetime project and it is a great example of doing quality work plus being in the right place at the right time. As with many of the teams chasing this project, the tracking, positioning, etc. began many years earlier. Honestly it was on our radar, but not a high priority due to the extremely stiff competition and the fact that our services focus on building, not infrastructure design. Our growing relationship with Parsons Brinckerhoff, our extensive green street design expertise, and our understanding of working with architects combined to secure us a place on this historic project. We are thrilled.

The marketability of being on such a high profile project is immense. So I eagerly wait to help it unfold. We do not know the full scope of our role yet but we will embrace our role with the same enthusiasm, creative vigor and quality so this project is a success.

Below is the article from the Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce that outlines the entire team. We look forward to building lasting relationships with all our teaming partners.

On a personal level, I am excited to watch Seattle undergo this transformation … It has been a long time coming!

Engineering team picked for Seattle waterfront redesign

· Central Waterfront Partners is led by Shiels Obletz Johnsen, CH2M Hill, Parsons Brinckerhoff and Parametrix.

By KATIE ZEMTSEFF
Seattle DJC Staff Reporter

The city of Seattle has picked an engineering, management and public outreach team for the Central Waterfront Project.

The team, called Central Waterfront Partners, is led by Shiels Obletz Johnsen, CH2M Hill, Parsons Brinckerhoff and Parametrix.

Ken Johnsen will be project manager.

The team beat out three other finalists. Those teams were led by Tetra Tech, HDR/HNTB and Jacobs/Arup.

The total design and planning contract for the waterfront work is expected to be about $50 million. The project involves creating more than nine acres of new public space and a new surface street.

Here are the other members of Central Waterfront Partners:

• The Fearey Group, Seattle

• ReadWagoner, Seattle

• NelsonNygaard, San Francisco

• Mimi Sheridan, Seattle

• Shannon & Wilson, Seattle

• Shen Consulting, Seattle

• KBA, Bellevue

• Power Engineers, Hailey, Idaho

• Coughlin Porter Lundeen, Seattle

• William Ott Construction Consultants, Seattle

• The VOSK Group, Seattle

• Applied Professional Services, North Bend

• Certified Land Services, Seattle

James Corner Field Operations of New York was selected as the urban design lead on Sept. 21. To select the design team, the city organized a public presentation by the four shortlisted teams and announced the winner at a press conference. No public presentations or press conferences were held for the engineering team.

Steve Pearce, Seattle Department of Transportation’s central waterfront project manager, said there was more public interest in choosing the lead designer than the lead engineer.

Under the city’s selection process, teams responded to an RFQ for the urban design track or the engineering track. After the James Corner Field Operations team was chosen, James Corner joined the city’s selection panel to pick the engineering team.

Pearce said urban design and engineering are equally important. With both teams in place, the group now can work together as an integrated team.

“The selection of Track A and Track B was to ensure we got the best talents in each area working together,” he said. “The distinction between Track A and Track B is now erased.”

The lead firms vying for the urban designer track were based in cities across the country: New York, Philadelphia and Seattle. The engineering teams were all national firms with established offices in Seattle. Team members in Central Waterfront Partners have a larger local presence than members on the design lead team. Given the nature of the work, Pearce said having a significant part of the team be local was an advantage.

City officials liked a number of things about Central Waterfront Partners, Pearce said. The team has an effective approach to project management, innovative ideas about outreach and is looking at street design with a focus on multi-modal transportation.

He said another plus is Ken Johnsen, who has worked on a number of complex construction and transportation projects in Seattle such as Safeco Field, Seattle Streetcar and Seattle City Hall.

The city expects to complete contract negotiations within a month and enter into a contract for the $6 million first phase.

During the first phase, the design team will do a larger portion of the work. In subsequent phases, the engineering team will play a larger role. More of the overall budget will go to the engineering team, Pearce said.

It’s unclear how many phases the project will have.

Pearce said the teams will start work quickly. In April of 2011, the city will decide on a preferred alternative for the seawall. The waterfront team will start design now to make sure it has input on the seawall decision. It will begin work this month on a framework plan and conceptual design.

A conceptual design is expected by 2012 and a final design is expected to be delivered in 2015.

Construction of the Central Waterfront is scheduled from 2016 to 2018.

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13 PR resources you may not know

Jan Flesher — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 06:30:38 +0000

By Jeremy Porter via ragan.com

Get to know many of these (free) public relations tools

I’ve used products from Vocus, Cision, BurrellesLuce, PRNewswire, BusinessWire and Marketwire in the past, and they’ve all helped me get my work done faster and deliver stronger results for clients.

There also is a range of free products out there (HARO comes to mind) that deliver tremendous value to PR pros. Despite the popularity of HARO, I still regularly come across PR pros who’ve never heard of it. This got me thinking — what other PR tools are out there that people have never heard of?

—————

Thanks to @GeorgeDearing for bringing this to my attention. I recently signed up to use HARO and find it quite interesting. Although I have not seen anything folks from my firm or I could respond to, I have passed along the leads to colleagues. Since HARO is a fairly new thing for me, I’ll try to follow up in a month or so and let you know my thoughts.

Has anyone used any of these other services/programs from the article? I’d love to hear about them. –J

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Seattle DJC Newspaper – Architecture & Engineering – James Corner team to lead waterfront design

Jan Flesher — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 19:05:00 +0000

James Corner team to lead waterfront design

By JOURNAL STAFF

The city of Seattle today picked James Corner Field Operations as lead
designer for the central waterfront project. The firm was the project lead for
High Line, an urban park set on top of an old elevated railroad structure in New
York City.

More on James Corner
Field
Operations

Read our special feature on the team here: www.djc.com/news/en/12021740.html

Here are the other firms on the team:

• SHoP Architects, New York

• Mark Dion, New York

• Creative Time, New York

• Fluidity, Los Angeles

• Tomato, London

• HR&A Advisors, New York and Los Angeles

Local reactions to
all the design
teams

Take a look back at our story from last week about local
reactions to the proposals: www.djc.com/news/ae/12021811.html

• Herrera Environmental Consultants, Seattle

• Jason Toft, Seattle

• The Berger Partnership, Seattle

• Mithun, Seattle

• ETM Associates, New York

For more information, visit: www.fieldoperations.net or www.thehighline.org.

via djc.com

Congrats to James and his team.

All four teams were excellent and their presentations were enlightening. It is exciting to know that Seattle will soon (next 10 years) have a fresh new look onto our shores and a truly accessible waterfront.

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How to Hire a Designer or Developer : Technology :: American Express OPEN Forum

Jan Flesher — Sun, 12 Sep 2010 02:18:03 +0000

How to Hire a Designer or Developer

Sep 09, 2010 -

Hiring designers or developers can be one of the most difficult things for non-technical business people to do. In many cases, it may be necessary, of course, to hire someone to create your website, build custom systems, or design your sales collateral — all the more necessary if you aren’t a designer or developers yourself. But how can small business owners hire someone that’s right for the job if they don’t really understand what goes into that job in the first place?

via openforum.com

Thanks to Pete Cashmore @ Mashable for the heads up. Decent advice and coming from AmEx’s site I’m a bit surprised it isn’t more about online sales using credit cards. Well done AmEx!

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