This morning I ventured out to the Arizona Technology Council’s CIO forum. Anna Frazzetto, vice president of Technology Solutions for Harvey Nash USA presented their findings from the IT Leadership 2006/2007 CIO Survey followed by a round table discussion by 5 business people in various CIO related roles from local Phoenix businesses.

Having an Internet bent on everything I do, I was curious to hear how CIO’s for companies view the Internet. Do they see it as a marketing/sales project? Is it the responsibility of IT? What challenges do CIOs face when dealing with online CRM systems like Salesforce.com or by making company data available via externally accessible intranets?

Instead, the only question posed to the round table that was not related to off shoring was in regards to virtualization. I was in awe that there wasn’t ethical questions about off shoring, instead it was more a conversation as to what to off shore and how to manage it. Places like India, China, Vietnam, and even Mexico are fully capable and are in fact doing off shore projects for very large US companies. This seems to be a given in the CIO world.
The reason seems to stem from available resources. US colleges are graduating less than 10% of their students in computer and IT related fields. Less available bodies means greater costs to recruit and hire these students. Places like India can have as high as 85% of their graduating students in IT related fields. And here, inexpensive labor does not mean cheap work. It’s purely supply and demand.

When deciding what type of activities to off shore, panelist Fred Mapp, President of Quality Service Solutions, put it best, “You need to know what are your company’s core competencies.”

Obviously, you don’t want to off shore or outsource what makes you unique. Instead, you want to off shore those activities that aren’t productive for your company to be part of.

And don’t fall for the 80 - 90% cost savings hype that is often bantered about. Instead, you may expect to save about 40 - 50% after factoring time to manage and deal with the project.

I don’t want to get into any ethical conversation on this topic. If you feel strongly one way or another, I recommend discussing the issues with the Computer Science department at your local university. Also, kids learn what they want to be when they grow up at a young age. When was the last time you told your kids, “Computer Science could be fun.  That’s a profession I would look into.”

One problem of doing business in a new city is knowing where to hold lunch meetings. It can be potentially embarrassing to invite a new contact to an initial meeting at a restaurant that is less than par. These first impressions not only reflect on you but the brand of your company.

If you need to find some safe bets, try http://www.10best.com/. Here is the list for Phoenix.

Recently, I attended an American Marketing Association event here in Phoenix on the topic of Emotional Advertising and Advertising Effectiveness. E. B. Lane presented an excellent case study on their client, Cable One. Cable One was faced with increased competition from satellite providers, and therefore, decreasing retention of their customers. E. B. Lane determined that a strong emotional sell would be the best way to improve customer satisfaction and would lead to customer acquisition.

At the end of the presentation, they showed five or six television advertisements centered around the tag line, “Watch us make you smile.” The campaign was focused on the personal side of Cable One and how a company that cares about its customers, listens more and out performs the competition.

At the end of the presentation, a lady asked the questions, “How do you extend this emotional sell on to the website?” It seemed clear that understanding the Cable One strategy and creative for this group of professionals was a no-brainer, but trying to apply these techniques to the Internet was the mystery.

Here’s my attempt to answer her question. In the advertisements, Cable One is making the promise that when you deal with them on the phone and in person, they are going to make every effort to be prompt, courteous and understanding. What needs to be done on the website is to continue to answer this promise. This is more than tacking the new tag line in the upper corner and showing copies of the TV ad encoded in the latest video format. Instead, Cable One needs to make it extremely easy for customers to find out about services in their area, get a hold of service reps, or anything else that would allow the customer to watch Cable One make them smile.

This is where the advertising agency, the customer service department, and the web team need to get into a room and figure it out. Marketers can no longer look at a website as a online brochure or interactive advertisement. Instead, they need to treat these interactions as if they were a point of sale transaction, customer service call, or billing discussion. Interactions with the website can make or break that customer relationship just like the physical interaction Cable One was trying to influence. It also can’t be left to the web team alone to know how to handle these high touch relationships. Unless the company outsources their web work to a highly trained marketing company (shameless plug), IT professionals are not going to understand the intricacies of branding that occur during the customer experience.

So, to sell the emotion online, you have to actually live up to the promise of the advertisements. It will take effort, consistency, and practicing. But those who do it well, can truly separate themselves from the competition.

It felt good to get out of the house and meet some true Phoenicians today. I attended the Phoenix Chapter of the American Marketing Association’s Luncheon, featuring E.B. Lane Advertising. They discussed Emotional Memory and Advertising Effectiveness by presenting their case study on their client, Cable One.

The event was held at the Phoenix Country Club whose history and relevance is unknown to me, but probably impressive in that country club style that only red velvet and valet parking can signify. The lunch was buffet style, which interestingly enough, lends itself to networking far better than being served at your table.

The room size and attendance was very familiar to me as it was almost identical to the many AMA meetings I attended in Reno. What wasn’t familiar to me were any of the faces. This meant a second’s hesitation before introducing myself to as many people as possible. I was only slightly amazed that everyone else seemed to know few others as well.

As I learned after 8 years of business development in Reno, it takes time to cultivate your networks and start reaping word of mouth referral business. I think today was a good first day of putting my stake in the ground and taking root. I now know more faces and names then I did this morning and I look forward to the next event.

Tags: AMA, Phoenix, Advertising

I love to extol the virtues of blogging to our clients. I’ve been blogging on several different blogs for many years now. However, for those who have never blogged, figuring out how to construct the language of a blog post for maximum exploitation is something of a mystery. CopyBlogger.com has written an ezine, Viral Marketing with Blogs, and has released it for free. It’s been out for awhile, but if you haven’t read it or if you are starting a blog, you should download it as soon as you can.

It gives you excellent tips on how to get other bloggers to notice, and hopefully link to your blog.

Tags: Copywriting, ezines, blogging

While in Reno, I lamented the fact that I had a LAN line in my house. I was resolute that I would not give phone marketers the opportunity to harass me by avoiding the LAN line altogether in Phoenix. During my first week in my home office, my plan to solely use my cell phone died a horrible death. Even though coverage for at&t seems ubiquitous in the area, calls were dropping faster than leaves into my swimming pool (pool maintenance is a whole separate subject).

I could get VOIP from Cox - the local cable company, but it seemed overly costly. So I turned to Skype. I was able to purchase SkypeIn with a local Phoenix number for $18 for three months. That’s only $6 a month. It includes free voice mail so if I’m not available or can’t answer, it jumps to a message I recorded. In order to make calls out, I purchased SkypeOut Unlimited. It’s $8.85 for three months. I can call anywhere in the US and Canada with unlimited minutes. So basically for $9 a month, I’m getting about $25 in service if I were to go the more traditional route. Skype automatically pauses iTunes when a call comes in and the voice quality is awesome.

I did run out and purchase a USB Plantronics headset for about $20. I’m also thinking about getting a a WiFi enabled handset that doesn’t require a computer to connect. This way, I’m not tied to my computer and can use it from anywhere in the house. So far, I have no complaints. I don’t have to have the computer on or be logged in to let users leave voice mail. Right now, it seems like the optimal solution.

One of the first items to take care of was switching my cell phone number from my Reno area code (775) to a local Phoenix area code.

I decided it might be easier to use the Cingular at&t support number, rather then try and locate a corporate office and wait in line just to have them tell me to call in. After finding the customer support number on their website, I spoke to a rep who gave me the number of the at&t relocation department - (800) 826-7375.

Upon calling back into that number, I was surprised at how quickly I was talking to a live body. He informed me that they would set up the new numbers - my wife’s cell as well as mine - but I would need to wait 3-5 days for new SIM cards. Once I receive the new SIM cards, I need to call back in to activate them. Some of the items he shared were:

• There will be no charge for relocation
• We will keep all our existing roll over minutes
• We will loose all voice mail in our mailboxes
• We will have to re-setup our cingular.com profile

All in all, the process was pretty painless. I’ll keep you updated on the SIM card progress.

Today marks my third day as the Twelve Horses Phoenix office. The first two have been spent catching up on two days worth of email, prioritizing fires, and updating addresses.

This blog will act as the local website for the new office. To be fair, the new office is currently a home office with all production work being done out of Reno. As I grow the business here, I will add staff and eventually need a physical office location. I hope to bring readers along as Twelve Horses becomes a web development shop to contend with here locally.

In the near term, I will blog about the issues surrounding relocation to Phoenix, the trials of setting up what I need to do business (phone, fax, internet), and the social events I plan to attend.