The Essential Message Blog

Play Your Cards Right

Finally! Restaurants and pubs all over Toronto have opened their patios. In this city, that can only mean one thing - summer is on it's way!

It also means that your roster will soon be full of networking events - networking events you will actually attend. Let's face it, we all know we need to go to these things. They're just much more appealing when they involve umbrella drinks, open-toed shoes, and the possibility of a tan.

But before you slap on the coconut oil, ask yourself: when it comes to networking events, do you know how to play your business cards right?

Pass it on...authentically.

When it comes to word of mouth (WOM), I don't think anyone's ever said it better than marketer   Christina Kerley. From her blog:

When a person finds value in a brand they are inspired to tell others. And because that brand buzz is authentic (not profit-driven), others trust their opinion--and might just buy the brand, too. That is how WOM works. And how it's always worked.

Case studies are a crucial component of your marketing toolbox.. They add credibility to your claims and demonstrate the concrete benefits and advantages of your product or service. Perhaps most importantly, they help prospects understand how they might apply those benefits within their own organization.

Case studies are also helpful to communicate your key points of difference - what sets your company apart from all the others. (You do know your Essential Message, right?)

Powerful case studies and scenarios, however, don’t happen by chance. They must be short enough to be easily read and understood, while long enough to include both the key rational and emotional points that support your positioning.

Sound daunting? Well never fear - we've created a template that will help you write a case study (or better yet, several) quickly and easily. It will help you organize your thoughts, information and customer comments in a way that can be easily transformed into a powerful, interesting and valuable case study or scenario. You can jot down bullet points for each section in any order that is easiest for you.

Missions and mantras and messages...oh my!

Mission statements. We've all read them. We've all tried to write them. And we've all discovered that, nine times out of ten, they stink.

The Chair

I was surfing around the marketing blogosphere yesterday, and came across this great story from Patrick Schaber. As soon as I read it, I knew I had to share it with you all. It's the best example I've ever come across of how real, honest communication - something that has, in this age of mobiles, Blackberries and email, fallen by the wayside - revolutionized a fast-paced, technology-laden Fortune 500 company.

What spurred this revolution? A couple of chairs.

Get Scrabulous!

Like everyone else in the known universe, I am on Facebook. It was fun at first - looking up old friends, seeing which of my ex-boyfriends lost their hair - but after a month or so, I was bored.

Until Scrabulous.

Scrabulous, if you don't know, is an application created by two brothers from Calcutta, India that closely emulates the board game. It has become the most popular app on Facebook, with over 600,000 active players. I am one of them.

But if Hasbro/Mattel gets their way, I may not be one for long.

The EM Diet

When I was a kid, I could eat anything and stay skinny as a rail. But once I hit my late teens, I started to...ahem...fill out. I am short, and have a small frame. 5 pounds on me LOOKS like 5 pounds. By the time I hit my mid-twenties, I'd gone from a wiry 95lbs to a sturdy, puffy 140lbs, most of it around my middle.

Thing is, I was anything but a junk-food junkie. Sure, I ate some "fun food" now and then, but for the most part my diet was low fat, lacto-ovo vegetarian. I ate eggs, low-fat dairy, and lots of whole grain pasta and bread. I religiously checked nutrition labels, selecting foods that fit the high-fibre, low-fat criteria that the media and the health community assured me would guarantee good health and a trim waistline. Butter, to me, was the Antichrist in spreadable form. Still, the weight kept coming.

Zen And The Art Of Email Maintenance, Part 2

Welcome, grasshopper, to your second lesson in email management. We have learned how to manage our inboxes, and therefore be better receivers. Now we are going to travel further along the path to electronic enlightenment and learn how to be better senders, through the teachings known as The Four Noble Email Truths. As Buddha says: Through poorly structured emails you may 'solve' one problem, but you           sow the seeds for another.

Zen And The Art Of Email Maintenance, Part 1

Email interrupting your workflow? Inbox interfering with your inner peace? If you're like most of us, your answer is a weary, defeated "yes". While email has certainly simplified communication and is a valuable business tool, it can also be a cruel, cruel mistress. How many of us have opened our email program only to be overrun by a bloody onslaught of new messages - messages that add even more chaos to the already message-ridden battlefield that our inbox has become - and beat a hasty retreat, vowing to deal with them later?

Never fear, grasshopper. In this first installment of Zen and the Art of Email Maintenance, we will look to the East and discover the 5 Precepts of Email Management; how to, as Buddha put it, be master of email rather than mastered by email. (I may be paraphrasing here - some of these old, dusty scrolls are hard to read.)

Messaging RX

I am a regular reader of Protein Power author Dr. Mike Eades' blog. He mainly covers issues relating to nutrition, and how to control or treat certain conditions (like diabetes) with diet - but lately he's been posting often about the dangers of statin drugs, used to lower cholesterol. In his opinion, statins are over-prescribed, have no proven benefit, and can actually lead to harm. So what does this have to do with your Essential Message?