Be the Match

This past Labor Day, my wife donated her bone marrow to save the life of someone she has never met and knows nothing about.  Through this opening sentence you can probably gather that my wife lives her life with her hands open.  My hope is that by sharing this one example it may inspire others to live with hands open as well. 

Be the Match is an amazing organization that is dedicated to saving lives.  The National Marrow Donor Program^® (NMDP), a nonprofit organization, is the global leader in providing bone marrow and umbilical cord blood transplants to patients in need. As Be The Match^®, they operate the Be The Match Registry^®, the world’s largest listing of potential marrow donors and donated cord blood units and raise funds to help provide transplants to all patients through the Be The Match Foundation^®. They also match patients with donors, educate health care professionals and conduct research through our research arm, the Center for International Blood and Marrow Transplant Research^® (CIBMTR), so more lives can be saved. 

We started down this path when Lorrie found out that her cousin's daughter was diagnosed with leukemia last year.  Lorrie registered with Be the Match in hopes of becoming a match for Cede.  Lorrie learned more about the cause and the disease as Cede battled for her life. Before Lorrie was able to complete the registry process, Cede began her journey in heaven.

Our summer started out pretty rough.  I unexpectidly lost my job in June. When you have two kids under 4 and you are the sole bread winner, it sets the stage for a stressfull situation.  The same week Lorrie went to get a mammogram.  A few days later we received a call asking her to come back in for more tests. They had found something. We were scared, but stayed strong and prayed a lot over the next few days.  Thankfully, the results came back benign.  What an emotional roller coaster and a reality check! It sure did put losing my job into perspective. 

The very next week Lorrie received a call that she was a match for someone.  Once Lorrie got off the phone we talked about it as a family and immediately decided to pushed ahead without looking back.  What an amazing and powerful opportunity that had been dropped in front of her. 

We traveled to Birmingham for a weekend of tests to make sure Lorrie's blood was approved for donation.  The test came back, she was good to go and was scheduled for surgery a few weeks later. 

We had a couple weeks back in Atlanta before the procedure.  I remember going for a walk with Lorrie and the kids on a Saturday morning.  We were talking about everything and I distinctly remember a feeling that overcame me while we were walking.  It was a feeling toward her I have never felt.  It was more than feeling proud...not even sure their is a word for it. All I know is that my feelings toward my wife have never been the same.  It took our relationship and my love for her to another level.  Similar to how you become more connected after you have children, you can't explain it, it just happens. 

The  process of donating bone marrow is pretty intense, but when you grasp the bigger picture of what you are doing, courage prevails.  Lorrie said she would do it again in a heart beat.  During this time we were hearing stories about other donors and recipients.  One donor said it well "The courageous ones are those battling a disease, after my procedure I got to lay on my couch for a week and eat ice cream." 

The folks at "be the match" were very accommodating and helpful along the way. You can visit their website www.marrow.org to learn more about the process.

Recently our pastor spoke about how to "be rich".  Being rich is not about having a lot of money, but living through Christ and opening yourself up to be fulfilled.  My wife is the richest person I know.

I purchased these Robin Roberts bracelets from Be the Match to remember the feeling I felt toward my wife that day during our walk

Cause Marketing - quick facts, benefits, and getting the most out of it!

Below is an info graphic I developed for a client around cause marketing.  It seems as though more and more brands  are incorporating cause marketing into their marketing plans.  

 

 

 

Chick Fil A Leadercast

I had the pleasure of attending the Chick-fil-A Leadercast this month along side some of the top leaders in Atlanta and around the country.  It was extremely motivating.  Below are the notes I compiled from the event.  

Key note speakers included:

• Andy Stanley
• Urban Meyer
• Tim Tebow
• Soledad O'Brien
• Marcus Buckingham
• Dr. Sheena Iyengar

Some personal to do's include:

• Review my personal development plan.  Grow intentionally!  
• Create a mission statement – what am I about? 
• Tell my story "better" - update my personal profile to be centered around the choices I have made to get where I am

Andy Stanley – "the goal of leadership is not to eradicate uncertainty but rather to navigate it."

Leadership is uncertainty.  Leadership is about choices

Questions that can help you be a good leader:

1.  What would my replacement do?  Think about the idea around being too comfortable, embrace objectivity of the question “what would my replacement do?”

 

"If the board kicked us out and brought in a new group to lead, what would they do?  Why not walk out the door and do it ourselves."  -Andy Grove (author) Only the Paranoid Survive

2.  What would a great leader do?   Study some great leaders in our history.  Learn from them. 

Wealth isn’t worth it.  Truett Cathy “if we get better, customers will demand that we get bigger” an answer to the question around Chick fil A trying to grow too fast.  

3.  What story do I want to tell?  Every decision you make is part of the story you are telling. 

• Don’t ever choose anything that will make you a liar. 
• Money comes, money goes, your story is with you forever!
• Become a leader worth following

Tips of the trade: How to get ahead!

·         Be ready when your name is called

·         Focus on what you CAN control

·         What do you do when you are derailed – what do you turn to?  A drink, faith, family? 

·         What if someone says I am not a role model – “yes you are, just not a very good one”

·         Your outlook can change your life.  Wake up and say “I can’t wait to make someone’s day better today”  “I can’t wait to be better today?”

·         Effective leaders empower people with choice

·         Choice is the most powerful tool we have.  It allows you to go from who you are today to who you want to be tomorrow. 

·         Effective leaders see choices from other’s eyes

·         Be choosy about choices

·         A leader is someone who can live with nothing and have everything

·         Great leaders are vulnerable.  Develop that vulnerable trust

It was a fantastic event.  I will be there next year! 

Brett Campbell - AMA - Atlanta Volunteer of the Month

http://amaatlanta.wordpress.com/2012/04/25/volunteer-of-the-month-brett-campbell/#comments

Volunteer of the Month: Brett Campbell

April 25, 2012

by amaatlanta

Brett Campbell, director of marketing for Moe’s Southwest Grill, is this month’s AMA volunteer of the month. Brett Campbell's dedication to growing AMA’s connection with Georgia college students is unquestioned. In this past year, Brett Campbell has traveled throughout the state of Georgia to answer questions from college students about what they can expect from a career in marketing. Additionally, Brett Campbell was instrumental in recruiting both speakers and attendees for this year’s 26th Annual AMA Collegiate Conference.

“Brett Campbell has made all of our jobs significantly easier this year,” agreed Collegiate Co-Chair’s Greg Cohen and Patrick West.

At Moe’s, Brett Campbell is responsible for strategic and promotional development and brand management. He joined Moe’s, now with over 450 restaurants, in 2010 as the brand was celebrating their 10 year anniversary. Prior to joining Moe’s, Brett Campbell spent 10 years working his way up through the marketing department at The HoneyBaked Ham Company of Georgia. There, he oversaw the franchise marketing programs and was responsible for driving multiple business channels and day parts, such as lunch, catering and business to business gifting. Brett Campbell earned his bachelor degree in business with a minor in mass communication at the University of Florida.

“I love AMA because it provides an outlet for growth,” said Brett Campbell. “Through networking, volunteering, access to marketing trends and info, it is a unbelievable resource to better your skill sets, grow your connections and develop a framework for the future.”

Moe's Southwest Grill launches mobile ordering app | FastCasual.com

I am very proud to have lead the talented Moe's team around a successful roll out of our first app!

http://www.mobilecommercedaily.com/2012/05/24/moe%e2%80%99s-southwest-grill-satisfies-consumer-cravings-with-mobile-ordering-app 

Moe's Southwest Grill launches mobile ordering app | FastCasual.com

Brand Positioning

I just spent two days going through a brand positioning workshop for Moe's Southwest Grill.  What a challenging and awesome process!   My colleagues and I were honored to have Dwight Jewson, PhD from Strategic Frameworking Inc. www.strategicframeworking.com  take us through this enlightening process. 

I have been through the process before with HoneyBaked Ham.  At the time, our agency on record was The Richards Group and they use a slightly different model (they call their process "spherical branding") than I am going to describe.

For those of you that haven't been through this process, brand positioning is one of the most important pieces of the business.  Attributes that connect to a brand tell the consumer how they feel about the brand.  Brand positioning builds equity and relevance of the brand.  It connect the customer and validates their choice to participate with the brand. It also becomes the foundation and filter for all you do from marketing, operations, training, etc.

We spent the first half of day one talking about the importance of brand positioning.  I outline some of the highlights below.  He walked us through what he calls "the criteria for a brand positioning":

• It is born from a larger purpose
• It is simple and compelling
• It speaks to something scarce
• It is intensely human
• It instills strong energy
• It establishes clear brand authority
• It clearly communicates identity
• It takes us to a differentiation territory

He also talked about customer currency, which I found very compelling:

• time - no one has enough of it
• energy - how much skill do I need as a customer to participate
• quality - is it a quality product
• money - affordability
• self esteem - how do I feel about myself when I buy it (this form of currency was very interesting to me)

As a marketer, understanding the variations of customer currency and identifying which ones to leverage or "do well" is important.  Take Panera for example, there format is not really fast, but it isn't "sit down slow" either. There menu system is confusing with little explanation around products, you are confused with where to go to order (the bakery, the lunch line, etc) so the customer does spend a lot of energy prior to ordering. You have to wait for your food and go into basketball mode and box out others at the counter from mistaking your food for theirs and walking away with it.  Probably, no, definitely an area they can improve. Quality is what they excel in - they have a great product! It is on the higher end of fast casual, but still affordable.  My self esteem is definitely heightened when I eat at Panera.  I feel healthy, I leave there light footed with a pep in my step knowing I have made a good choice about what I have put into my body.  This dynamic or notion of self esteem being a form of consumer currency is sooo interesting to me.  This is a new learning for me as a brand manager. 

We spent the rest of day one, going through a process where we constructed our "advantage playing field".  We had to establish our opportunity zone on an axis.  We had to create a differentiated advantage from our competitors through the attributes we chose to plot on either end of the axis.  This process was pretty grueling and we agonized of each word. 

Next we created our short story or brand benefit hierarchy. He called them the building blocks of branding.  It includes:

Sign up for something bigger

Emotional benefits

Functional benefits - what do we do for people

Attributes - what is our stuff

Strategic Pivot - what is going on in culture that we join

Target

 

 

The process starts at the bottom and works up.  We defined our target, identified the strategic pivot agonized over our attributes, benefits, and landed on the bigger purpose.  It took us all of day two to go through it, but I think we landed in a great place.  At this point, the information is confidential, but I can share some other brands that we used as an example:

 

 

Nike

Unlimited Personal Potential - Something bigger

irreverence, justified - emotional benefit

winning - functional benefit

products made to the exacting standards of the world's best athletes - attributes

All in all, an awesome exercise.  I truly enjoy this kind of work and find myself analyzing other brands to define their brand positioning short story.  Next, communicating the new positioning to the system and the department heads, identifying touch points, and beginning executing against the new and improved positioning statement.

One a side note, Dwight recommended a few books which I haven't read, but will share:

• Different - Youngme Moon
• How We Decide - Jonah Leher 

Brett Campbell awarded with Marketing MVP Award

Marketing MVP award presented
by Paul Macaluso, VP of Marketing

I was extremely honored to recieve the marketing MVP award at our annual leadership conference at the end of February. 

"The award recognized Brett Campbell with excellence in marketing for the Moe's Southwest Grill brand and was voted on by his peers".

2011 was full of challenges and great opportunities.  Some went my way, some didn't, but I learned more in 2011 than any other thus far in my profressional career. 

In addition, I found out that in April I will be awarded volunteer of the month by AMA-Atlanta.  AMA-Atlanta is the largest networking organization in Atlanta and the 4th largest AMA chapter in the country.  I have already recieved so much out of donating my time to the organization so this was just icing on the cake.  I am excited about my opportunities to contribute to AMA in  2012/13!  In addition to serving on the Board of Directors next year, I will be co-chair of the revived mentorship program.  I am truely looking forward to tackling this rewarding challenge. 

All in all, shaping up to be a great year.  My moto for 2011 was "keep on growin"...

My 2012 College Speaking Tour

Over the past several months I have had the opportunity to talk to marketing students at multiple universities around Atlanta.  During the designated hour, I walk through what I do in my role as Director of Marketing at Moe's  (brand management, strategy development, promotions, etc.).  I am really lucky because I love what I do and I work on an amazing brand so I find myself getting really pumped up while I am speaking to the students.   

http://aroundatk.gcsu.edu/?p=1128

As enthusiastic as I get, I have to pull myself in and remember this isn't about me, it is about the students and giving them real life insight into the marketing industry.  I try to provide a high level road maps of all the different directions/disciplines you can go in advertising / marketing, provide advice around the importance of networking and learning from your peers, always being a student, etc. 

I started these speaking engagements as a way to improve my public speaking skill set but have gotten so much more out of it than I ever imagined.  I am "giving back" and it feels really good.  Simple and rewarding.  I encourage anyone to try it...be a mentor, offer advice, take time out of your day to help the next generation, to teach them, encourage them. 

I can't wait to see how the next generation pushes "the veterans" into new spaces.



.

Psychology and Marketing

I recently read the book “Made to Stick” by Chip and Dan Heath.   While I understood the need to connect emotionally to a consumer, the need for ads to break through, the single most persuasive idea, etc. I was intrigued by the deep connection marketing has with psychology.  Duh, right?  Since marketing is all about the communication from brands to the end consumer.  Truly understanding and connecting the psychological connection to marketing can only make you a stronger marketer.

This book walks through some great concepts that will transform the way you communicate. At the foundation is the concept “make it simple”.  Find the core idea and stick to it.  In my training, we called this the single most persuasive idea.

“Compact ideas are sticky but compact ideas alone aren’t valuable.  Only ideas with profound compactness are valuable”.  To make it profound you have to put a lot of meaning into a little bit of messaging.  If simple ideas are staged and layered correctly, they can be very complex.   

Have you ever heard of schema?  It is a collection of generic properties of a concept or category.  They consist of a lot of pre-recorded info stored in our memories and help us connect meaning quickly.

Using schema improves the comprehension and memory.  Here is an example...ever heard of a pomelo?  It is basically a super sized grapefruit with a very thick and soft rind.  This explanation pulls up an image you can relate to (a grapefruit) then you can visualize the differences outlined in the description (super sized, etc.)

Good marketing communication should do the same to make complex ideas simple.  Teachers use schema a lot to communicate the lesson in a manner that the students can relate to.   Analogies can become platforms for novel thinking. 

Another interesting psychological concept is “good metaphors are generative”.  They generate new perceptions, explanations, and inventions.  For example, Disney employees are called “cast members”.  They don’t interview, they “audition”.  When they are on the grounds of the park, they are “on stage”.  The uniforms are called “costumes”.   On the other side, Subway has sandwich artists.  By definition, artists are free thinkers with individual expression.  This is definitely not how Subway wants their line employees to act.  Generative metaphors substitute something easy to think about for something difficult. 

As marketers, we often use the team “breaking through”.   The most basic ways to get some ones attention is to break a pattern.  Humans adapt incredibly quickly to consistent patterns.  Our brains are keenly aware of change (think about car alarms – they go through a series of noises). 

Schemas help us predict what will happen and how we should make decisions.  When an ad violates our schema our guessing machine fails, which causes us to be surprised.  Surprise jolts us to attention. 

Emotions help us deal with critical situations.  Anger prepares us to fight, fear prepares us to flee.  A secondary effect of being angry is that we become more certain we are right (think of a fight with your partner).   Emotions have a biological purpose. 

Think about the body motions of being surprised.  Your eyes widen to see more, your mouth and jaw drops and you become speechless so you are quite and motionless so you don’t miss anything.  Things halt and attention is focused involuntarily so you can think. 

In marketing, we use surprise to reinforce the simple message.  The twist should make sense to the viewer after they think about it but it is not something they see coming.  If you want an idea to be sticky, you have to break someone’s guessing machine and then fix it. 

In summary, the process includes:

·         Identify the central message you need to communication – find the core. 

·         Figure out what is counter intuitive about the message.  What are the unexpected implications of your core message?  Why isn’t it already naturally happening?

·         Communicate your message in a way that breaks your audience’s guessing machine

·         Then once the guessing machine has failed, help them refine the machine.

Here is an example of a sticky ad:

Enclave Buckle-up Ad - YouTube

All in all, great book and a must read for all marketers and copy writers.

Scot Safon Speaks at AMA Atlanta Collegiate Conference

As a member of the AMA (American Marketing Association) Atlanta Collegiate Committee, I was able to help organize the collegiate conference held at the Biltmore last Friday.  The conference agenda was designed to inspire and help steward college students who are about to enter into the business world. 

While I was part of the group that developed the agenda, I wasn't truley aware who Scot Safon was or what he was going to speak about.  I had heard "the name" in networking circles and heard the buzz from his appearance at the AMA Atlanta luncheon a few months ago. If you don't know who he is, Scot is currently the head hancho at Headline News.  His career timeline starts in an ad agency, eventually lands him at TNT developing movie posters (interestingly enough a dream of his), then onto lead CNN and HLN. 

For an hour I listened to Scot walk us all through his amazing career and his message was extremely simple...."be enthusiastic about what you are doing!!!" Simple....but difficult, I thought.  Some other quotes to share from the presentation; "persuasive writing versus creative writing", "remain a student throughout your career", "don't ever move for a title", "be intentional". 

Right then I vowed to remain a student and share some of the learning with others...hence, the blog.  Now, as I reflect and think about the presentation and his message, I ask how can I incorporate the learning into my own life?  Being true to myself and loving what I do, is a start.....