As most of you are probably aware by now, KFC recently launched its “Buckets for the Cure” campaign – through which it hopes to raise $8.5 million for Susan G. Komen for the Cure®. This amount would be the largest single donation ever made in the fight against breast cancer. To date, KFC has already raised more than $2.3 million through the campaign. On the surface, it seems like a fantastic idea. Who can argue with joining in the fight against breast cancer? And yet, the campaign has spawned numerous critical articles and blog posts. Most of them argue that there is simply too much of a disconnect between KFC and Komen. As Joe Waters, author of the cause marketing-related blog “Selfish Giving,” points out in his April 20 post, “it’s like 'Deadliest Catch' sponsoring Sea World.” KFC is known primarily for selling high-calorie, high-in-fat fried chicken. In fact, the restaurant rolled out its newest offering, the “Double Down” sandwich, around the same time as its Buckets for the Cure campaign. The Double Down features two fried (or grilled) chicken breasts served in place of bread, with cheese and bacon serving as the “meat.” And yet, obesity is known to be a major risk factor when it comes to cancer.

So, as some suggest, is KFC trying to “buy” goodwill through this campaign without genuinely being committed to the cause? Or is the company truly well-intentioned but unfortunately a bit misguided in its cause marketing efforts? I choose to believe the latter…

Nevertheless, as “Rally the Cause” author Scott Henderson discusses in his April 16 blog post on the matter, the campaign is definitely a prime example of "cause dissonance." The contradiction between KFC’s product and Komen’s mission is just too great.

Looking at it purely from a cause marketing perspective, KFC could have found other causes to support that made more strategic sense. In my blog post from March 3 on the subject of cause marketing, I talked about various factors that companies should consider when determining which cause(s) to support. One of those is making sure the cause aligns with the company’s own product or mission. So, in the case of KFC, a couple of ideas come to mind. Many KFC restaurants are located in urban areas. Perhaps the company could have committed to building safe parks and green spaces in the neighborhoods it serves. Or, it already has a scholarship program, The KFC Colonel’s Scholars Program. Perhaps it would make sense to build on that foundation and raise funds related to improving public education.

We’d like to know what you think. Should KFC have chosen a cause that didn’t pose such a disconnect in light of its primary product? Or should it be lauded for its Buckets for the Cure?

-Amanda

Turning Opportunity into Entrepreneurship (part 2)

I guess I should start this post with lesson 5.5 – when starting your business, deadlines should be honored, but you should also be flexible enough to recognize when deadlines can be changed. That said, part 2 is going live today, Tuesday, as my original goal of Monday was sidelined by a “typical Monday.” Here is part 2 of the top 10 things I learned during the first year of entering this insane world of entrepreneurship:

6) Treat starting your new business the same way you would treat finding a new job. When I first dipped my toe in the entrepreneurial water, I knew very few people in Colorado. I made it a goal to set up at least three “coffee” meetings a week with people I didn’t know well and then asked them questions about their business, the community and the trends they were seeing in the economy. It never failed that from those meetings I was introduced to a few of their personal and professional contacts. I drank a lot of coffee (not that I minded) and heard some great stories. Many of the contacts I made in the first year are still confidants today.

7) Reduce overhead. Don’t move into a fancy office the first year or two, unless it’s absolutely critical to the business. Spend money wisely. I worked out of my basement the first two years and then rented a small house off of Pearl Street in Boulder. It was so small; that the kitchen doubled as the conference room. It still remains my favorite office.

8) Spend time with family and friends. Make sure you talk about your plans with your friends and family so they know that this venture into entrepreneurship will consume you in the near term. At the same time, schedule dinners where you leave your smartphone at home. Plan a vacation and make a goal to check in for an hour in the morning and an hour at night. It’s not reasonable to think you can be “off the grid” in the early years, but put some parameters around the time that you will take away from your family during your getaways. We fondly refer to this concept as the "work/life blend." The idea of achieving ‘work/life balance’ was thrown out with the bathwater early on.

9) Join professional organizations. But don’t just join – get involved – really involved. Try to pick the one or two groups that are most meaningful to you -- either personally or professionally. Once of my greatest experiences was joining EO Colorado http://www.eonetwork.org/Pages/default.aspx nearly five years ago. It is a global organization of more than 7,300 business owners in 42 countries that provides opportunities for entrepreneurs to learn and grow from each other. I served on the board for the past four years and recently completed my term as president of the chapter. While the time commitment was considerable, it has been rewarding on multiple levels. EO just launched a new program for emerging entrepreneurs called EO Accelerator. accelerator.eonetwork.org If you have the desire to connect with like-minded folks, this program is worth considering
10) Market yourself. You are fortunate. You are starting a business when it has never been easier to market your company. Social media is the least expensive and most powerful way to start conversations with potential customers, partners and employees. Use it wisely and you will gain far more traction (and spend far less money) than advertisements provided entrepreneurs in the 90s.

You will never catch me advising someone against starting his or her own business. I just wished someone had spent time telling me the pitfalls to avoid before I dove in headfirst. But, then again, I may not have gotten on the diving board at all.

Turning Opportunity into Entrepreneurship

On the surface, it doesn’t make a great deal of sense. One might assume that high unemployment rates equates to skilled individuals pounding the pavement and reaching out to their networks to secure a job that will provide them with the safety and security of a steady paycheck and benefits. The truth is that it’s times like these that many of us realize that very few things in life offer us security, and as scary as it might be, it is time to create our own sense of security.

The fact remains that during times of the greatest economic recessions, more and more of people are launching entrepreneurial ventures. In fact, Entrepreneur Magazine published results from Challenger, Gray & Christmas' job market index that showed that 8.7 percent of job seekers gained employment by starting their own companies in Q2 2009, compared to the record low of 2.7 percent during Q4 2008.

I can tell you that there is never a better time to go out on your own. I can also tell you it is not easy. It will cause many sleepless nights. It is certainly not for everyone but for those willing to make the leap of faith to become an entrepreneur, I can promise you it will never be boring.

GroundFloor Media celebrates its 9th anniversary this year and looking back, I thought it might be worthwhile to share with you the top 10 things (divided into a 2-part blog so you aren’t bored to tears) I learned during the first year of entering this insane world of entrepreneurship (note: I started GroundFloor Media during the dot-com bust of early 2001 where the "work-experience unemployment rate" was 10.4 percent) http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2002/dec/wk3/art02.htm

1) Hire a strong attorney and a solid CPA. It is not your specialty (unless you are starting a law firm or a CPA firm) to know the legal and financial implications behind starting and building a business. This is not to say you shouldn’t be armed and dangerous with enough information to ask the right questions and make sound decisions, but spend the money to hire professionals who specialize in building small companies. Do you have E&O insurance? Do you have a Buy/Sell? Are you filing the proper documents with the IRS? I hired Colson Quinn http://www.colsonquinn.com/ (do not laugh at that photo, please) who specialize in entrepreneurs and still rely on their counsel nearly a decade later.

2) Build a professional website. When I launched GFM, I hired a freelance designer I had worked with in two previous lives and offered him part trade and part cash in order to build a site that we used for nearly six years. Now is the time to work with creative, dedicated freelance designers that are looking to design a site they can be proud of and use to promote their own business. Do you have something you can offer them in trade? If so, consider getting creative with your compensation.

3) Get involved in community efforts. Give of your time. It will come back to you in ways you never imagined possible. If you have a service or a product that a non profit could benefit from, consider giving it away. It will help others and help you keep things in perspective.

4) Take time away to work on the business; not just in the business. Even if you are the only one actually working on building the business and you have yet to bring on your first employee, schedule an offsite with yourself and get out of your ‘office’ to think about the strategy and direction of the business.

5) Connect people. We all have contacts we have made through the years. There are people that can benefit from meeting other folks you know, both professionally and personally. Make the introductions that make sense. You never know where they can lead.

More to come Monday…

Getting to "Why"

Last week, I had the opportunity to attend the Denver Press Club’s 16th Annual Damon Runyon Award Banquet with our friends at MolsonCoors. Talk of Colorado Native – the newly released amber lager featuring locally produced ingredients and packaging – eventually ceded to the evening’s honoree, political satirist, P.J. O’Rourke.

Channeling the spirit of Runyon – a celebrated journalist from the early 20^th century – O’Rourke delivered a humorous and provocative address about the history of journalism that dubbed early newspapermen as “paid rubber necks.” As the industry matured, the role of reporters evolved to uncover the full gamut of who, what, when, where and why for any given story.

Today, with the ubiquity of information available over the Internet, O’Rourke commented that the first four attributes of a news story – who, what, when, where – are widely available through any number of online channels with an immediacy that often threatens the value of traditional journalism. Therefore, to remain relevant and eclipse the current onslaught of content, the media must refocus on “why” and strive to explain the events, people and issues making news.

“The job of journalists is to explain – it’s the only job that we have left.”

- P.J. O’Rourke, April 9, 2010

This point is important, not only for reporters, but also for those of us who work with the news media and set out to create stories on behalf of our clients that are relevant to a larger audience. Yes, we’re continuing to engage social media to drive viral buzz and establish thought leadership, but if we want our news rise above the fray and deliver compelling stories via traditional media, we too must remember to consider the “why.”

Special thanks to the Denver Press Club for their ongoing leadership in highlighting quality journalism and bringing the national spotlight to Colorado for the annual Damon Runyon Award. O’Rourke joins a notable group of journalists to be honored with the Damon Runyon Award, including George Will, Bob Costas, Tim Russert and Rick Reilly.

Proceeds from the award banquet benefit the club’s scholarship fund and building maintenance. Six college journalists were awarded Damon Runyon scholarships in 2010.

GroundFloor Media is excited to include the Denver Press Club Damon Runyon scholarship program as a beneficiary of the GroundFloor Media Get Giving program. Get Giving is a way for GFM team members and our families, friends, clients and associates to contribute to local organizations in need of charitable donations.

The Social Media Cinderella Story

Our office recently caught a wicked case of basketball fever, mainly because GroundFloor Media Vice President Ramonna Tooley’s Alma Mater, Butler University, continued to take down larger and higher-ranked opponents during the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament.

After Butler secured a spot in the Final Four, one question from a co-worker caught my attention, “Is this normal? How does this smaller team keep beating these high-profile teams?” In hindsight the answer is very similar to describing how smaller companies can utilize social media to compete with much larger companies:

1) A Cohesive Team
Butler may not have the same caliber of players as a Syracuse or a Duke, but their athletes play really well together, and everyone knows their role – they follow The Butler Way. Similarly, many larger companies have issues with how to manage social media. Some of the most effective social media outreach comes from those companies who understand that social media should be as organic as possible. For some companies like Seattle’s Discovery Wellness Center, that means allowing one or two individuals to serve as the “voice” of the company, and all messages are filtered accordingly (in their case, it’s the CEO). Others like Zappos understand that all employees should have voice, and everyone can contribute equally. The first step is ensuring that everyone is on the same page, and then ensuring that everyone knows their role and executes flawlessly. This can sometimes be much easier to accomplish with a smaller staff or fewer departments.

2) A Solid Game Plan
You’re going to have a hard time winning if you don’t have a good plan in place. Butler’s players knew their match-ups, recognized strengths and weaknesses, and everyone knew where they should be on each play. Companies who integrate their social media plans into their traditional marketing and public relations programs are going to have a larger opportunity for success. Similarly, does your company have a social media response/crisis plan? Does everyone on your social media team know what constitutes a proper response or the best way to take a customer issue offline? There are a few recent examples of how things can turn bad quickly for companies if you don’t have that plan in place.

3) Talent
Butler may not have six former McDonald’s All-Americans on their team (as Duke does), but they do have several players who can be relied upon to step up and play to that level. It’s just as important for companies to bring their social media talent to the forefront. I’m personally not a proponent of Twinterns, but “social media experts” will only have 4-5 years of experience with social media due to its newness compared to other components within the public relations discipline. That might be the 15-year veteran who was an early adopter, or it could be the 24-year-old who also has a keen sense for overall communications. Regardless, make sure you’re putting your best players in the game.

4) A Little Luck
A couple of inches were all it would have taken for that half-court, last-second shot to go in and change the National Championship game. And maybe the timing of a Tweet or the right influencer seeing your blog post at the right time could make all of the difference in your social media efforts. But putting the right tools in place and having a solid plan put mid-major Butler in the same company as Duke, West Virginia and Michigan State, all powerhouse programs from the “Big 5” athletic conferences. Social media offers the same type of opportunities for smaller companies trying to compete with much larger marketing and public relations budgets.

Jim

Perfection of the basics and windows of opportunity

While skimming the headlines of Ragan’s PR Daily news feed yesterday, I quickly scanned over an article from Advertising Age titled “What PR pros and marketers can learn from the movie Hoosiers”. At first, I wasn’t going to read it, but then how could I resist – the movie “Hoosiers” provides a powerful message, and NCAA Men’s Final Four is just around the corner.

The author, Tom Denari, provided an excellent analogy about the similarities between a company’s brand strategy and the lessons from Norman Dale (aka Gene Hackman), coach of the Hickory Huskers, from the movie "Hoosiers." For me, the biggest takeaways were to ensure you establish the basics/fundamentals and be willing to take calculated risks.

Similar to the work GroundFloor Media does, we tell our clients to establish the fundamentals of any public relations campaign – develop the message, build the right background materials, media train your spokespeople, etc. – before launching your campaign/program. And secondly, don’t miss a window of opportunity – whether it’s a planned activity or a trend that you take advantage of in a very short timeframe. So go ahead, expand your marketing and public relations efforts by launching a Facebook page for your company, developing an integrated campaign across all your marketing vehicles, or enhancing your SEO to generate new ways to reach a key target market and support greater ROI.

If you haven’t read the article, I would encourage you to do so. What might be even more exciting is that we are living the “Hoosiers” dream – Butler (whose Hinkle Fieldhouse is featured in the movie, “Hoosiers”) is in the Final Four! Oh, and Butler is near and dear to one of our very own... it is Ramonna Tooley’s alma mater. Go Dawgs!

~ Jen Wills