Archive for April, 2009

Like I said, but better

Wednesday, April 29th, 2009

Being a Rebel is never easy and takes constant defense of your beliefs.  However, every now and again you run into someone who gets it and is able to put your ideology into powerful words.  I recently stumbled onto such a person in Scott Milhous.

I invite everyone to check out his blog at: http://www.scottmilhous.com/  Scott does a great job of quantifying the views I so often try to qualify.  Stick with us and you will get the complete picture of the future of marketing and advertising.

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How social media changed advertising

Tuesday, April 28th, 2009

When I think about advertising, I generally picture a pool.  In that pool there are the consumers.  They swim around and talk to each other and enjoy their lives.  The advertiser sits in the lifeguard chair which is much like a podium, with his bullhorn and yells to the consumers.  If the message is meaningful and timely, the swimmers listen.

So this was the job of the advertiser.  He had to decide which pool to shout his message to, which message would get the swimmers to listen and which bullhorn would reach the most swimmers.  A good advertiser would have a great message and deliver it in such a way that most of the pool listened.  New advances in bullhorns enabled great messages to be carried from pool to pool.  With each advance, the advertiser adapted and then kept right on shouting his message to the consumers.

And then a renaissance began.  A new medium that looked like a bullhorn came onto the market.  Assuming this was like any other shift in technology, advertisers kept yelling their messages.  As long as the message was loud enough and reached enough swimmers, the idea generally stuck.  But this new medium wasn’t really a bullhorn at all.  This bullhorn was social media and it would make messages yelled from a podium meaningless.

What social media is doing is changing the way that we receive our messages.  Instead of information being passed down from a source (think yelling from a podium) it is being created by the consumer.  First hand experiences are being recorded and become the source of what is going on in the world.  Messages that are not passed to us through this chain seem irrelevant.  Even traditional advertising does not have an impact unless it is discussed in social networks.

What has made the new means of receiving information so apparent is the recent boom of Twitter.  Twitter is the first social media that is centered solely around conversation.  Any other personal information or sharing is irrelevant, only the conversation matters.  The conversation has always been there, whether in blogs, social networks or information sharing but it never smacked you in the face the way that Twitter does.

With the conversation now clearly driving consumer behavior, advertisers are left scratching their heads on how to make their messages heard over the chatter in the pool.  What they do not realize is that men on podiums no longer drive decisions.  Messages are now created in the pool and spread person to person.  Social media allows for that person to person message to be spread far faster and far wider than any top-down message could hope for.  

And so the advertiser gets a new job.  This job is not so unlike his previous one: he has a message that he wants to spread to the pool.  However, instead of that message being shouted out, it is whispered from ear to ear.  This is the job of outreach.  Outreach listens to the conversations, becomes a part of the conversation and then uses that conversation to pass the message.  Sometimes this means creating a new conversation and sometimes this means joining old ones.  Regardless, social media has changed advertising into outreach.

Customized Consumer Outreach.  It’s time for a Rebel.

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Beat the Recession – Joblessness can spark the entrepreneur in you

Tuesday, April 14th, 2009

The Business Journal of Milwaukee – by Kathy Bergstrom

Starting a small business during a recession is scary, but Kyle Blades’ fears are tempered by his two tours of duty as a U.S. Marine in Iraq.

His military service provides “perspective on just how short life is and how lucky we are even in this down economy,” he said.

Blades, 25, of St. Francis, started his marketing company Rebel LLC after returning from his nearly year-long second tour of duty in September.

His position as a contract worker in the retail environment group at a Milwaukee manufacturer was eliminated while he served in Iraq. When he returned, the company told him it had a hiring freeze.

Rather than look for another job, Blades decided to strike out on his own. His experience in Iraq gave him the inspiration.

“I have my entire life ahead of me to do what it is I want,” he said.

Blades took three months to do research and meet with advisers from the U.S. Small Business Administration and the Service Corps of Retired Executives. In December, he got a $40,000 SBA loan through the Patriot Express program from U.S. Bank. The SBA loan program is for military members and veterans.

Rebel LLC bills itself as a customized consumer outreach company. Blades drew on his experience as a client of other marketing firms.

“I never really found anything that satisfied what I wanted to see from a marketing company,” he said.

His idea is to learn about the client first and find new ways to help the company reach its customers, whether that’s through public relations, business-to-business marketing, developing a marketing plan and other services.

Rebel LLC operates out of his St. Francis duplex and has 10 clients, including a bar, production company and a theater company. He hopes to generate $50,000 in revenue in his first year. January and February failed to meet projections, but business picked up in March.

He sees now as a “perfect time” to start a business, because other businesses may be looking for assistance in evaluating their operations.

“It’s absolutely a very scary time to be in business, but also very exciting because we can help turn things around,” Blades explained.

Russ Roberts, manager of the Small Business Center at Waukesha County Technical College, said it’s important to consider the business environment when starting a small business, but environment is not the only consideration.

Someone who has been laid off should consider whether they have what it takes to be an entrepreneur.

Some of the common qualities are persistence, drive, determination and passion for work.

Entrepreneurs also should be motivated less by the desire to make a lot of money and more by a love of what they do, Roberts said.

Prospective entrepreneurs can find an array of counseling services from places like the WCTC center, University of Wisconsin System and SBA.

If you’ve been laid off and don’t have an income, it might be wise to find some kind of job while the business is in its early stages, Roberts said.

Jeff Hekkers, 51, of Oconomowoc, stumbled across his idea for a business through volunteer work.

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The Insha’allah Effect

Tuesday, April 14th, 2009

Insha’allah.  This is what bothered me about Iraq.  Not the people trying to kill me.  Not the insults.  Not the lack of understanding back home.  Insha’allah.  God Willing.

So why this word in such a tumultuous place?  It’s not its religious usage or direct translation that bothered me.  The literal meaning that God can do His will is something that I agree with whole-heartedly.  What bothered me was its usage.

In a country where action was needed and results demanded, insha’allah was used to remove responsibility.  Will I help rid this area of terrorists?  Insha’allah.  Will I use the money you give me to help my neighborhood?  Insha’allah.  Insha’allah became the connotation that God’s will was for the people to do nothing and see what happened. 

When I returned to Iraq in 2008 I saw the Insha’allah mindset melt away.  No longer would the Iraqis sit around and watch their country crumble.  They would act, and, with God’s will, restore their country.

As I returned home, proud of the transformation the Iraqi people demanded of themselves, I became discouraged to find insha’allah deeply rooted in American society.  No longer was anything possible, no longer would the people determine their own fate.  America’s future was in somebody else’s hands.

These ominous hands were known as the economy.  We were powerless to control it.  What was for certain is that it was not our fault.  It was large businesses’, the government’s, somebody else’s fault.  Not our own. 

Who could blame us for taking out loans we could not afford?  Who could blame us for investing in companies that promoted corporate greed?  Who could blame us for not educating ourselves on what was going on?

This helpless blame drew in the insha’allah effect.  What seated it deep in our psyche was when we looked for a fix.  No one had the answer but what was clear is that it was somebody else’s problem.  Again, government, businesses and nameless faces were supposed to fix this.  We do not control this economy, they do.

Well, I refuse this outlook.  I refuse to sit by and say I am powerless to do anything about the problems we face.  I am part of what caused our economy to crumble, I am to be blamed for where we stand and I will take responsibility for fixing this problem.  I will not take out loans I cannot repay.  I will not invest in companies that promote corporate greed.  I will not shrug off educate about the economy and how I can help it rebound.

This is my stand.  This is what I expect of myself.  Furthermore, this is what I expect from those around me.  I expect everyone to take blame for where we stand.  I expect everyone to do everything and anything they can to help it rebound. I expect everyone to cast off the insha’allah effect and demand more from themselves and the people around them.

The fact of the matter is that we are the economy and we control it.  We must make a conscious effort to take action.  We must fend off the insha’allah effect.

I would appreciate your feedback, regardless of your opinion.  Please feel free to email me at: kyle@timeforarebel.com.

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Changing the Rules

Tuesday, April 14th, 2009

 The economy has changed; this cannot be denied. We see it on the news, read about it in our papers and study it online. There is little doubt that everything has shifted; we are in a new economic climate. 

Individuals who saw the economy shift and created businesses that they felt would help alleviate cost issues are generally left bewildered at the reaction they receive. Instead of companies jumping at the opportunity to save money while receiving the same level of service, they doubt the validity of such an idea. Apparently, all those years of salesmen justifying their high costs have been effective. 

When Michelle Fitzgerald started her law firm, Horizons Law Group, she presumed people would be looking for ways to reduce legal costs. Much to her amazement, companies, used to high legal costs, met her with heavy skepticism. Despite her high level of service at a reduced price, companies appeared unwilling to try a new way of attaining legal counsel.

In one example, Ms. Fitzgerald received a call from a woman looking for a quote. Fitzgerald asked several questions and then informed the woman that it would cost about $500. The woman stated that every other firm had quoted right around $3000 and wanted to know why Horizons was so much less. Ms. Fitzgerald explained to her that a lot of the paperwork that other firms would do was not necessary and she could receive the same protection for less money. The woman decided to spend the $3000. Clearly no law firm in its right mind would ever suggest spending less money for the same amount of protection.

Rebel, LLC was founded on much the same principle as Horizons. The founder, Kyle Blades, saw companies paying marketing, advertising and public relations firms huge amounts of money with little in return. He had a vision that Rebel could change the way companies reach consumers and, in doing so, keep prices down while watching sales go up. He figured the idea would be an immediate success, but companies are slow to accept the new concept, skeptical that less money will lead to greater success.

Tom Damm, a business consultant for SCORE, refers to this as the “you get what you pay for effect”. He explains that companies are wary of paying less for something because they are afraid they will get less in return. Thus, businesses that reduce costs while maintaining the level of quality often have a difficult time justifying their lower price tags.

A new economy would seem to welcome new ideas, but those who are paving the way find that not to be the case. Companies that are changing the cost to quality ratio remain confident that their ideals will succeed. “I know that as businesses see the success my clients have, they will begin lining up,” explains Mr. Blades. Undoubtedly, as more businesses feel the continual pinch of the economy, they will have to look for new ways of doing business. 

For further information on the above-mentioned businesses, please visit timeforarebel.com or horizonslaw.com.

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Rebel Opens to Rebel

Tuesday, April 14th, 2009

It is a new company, for a new time.  Rebel, LLC opened its doors in January to do exactly as its name suggests, rebel.  The rebellion is against normal marketing, advertising, public relations and brand management firms that Rebel says is turning consumers apathetic to businesses’ outreach attempts.

In order to raise its clients above the white noise, Rebel uses a technique they refer to as customized consumer outreach.  In this approach, Rebel looks at a company’s entire consumer interaction and looks for ways to create a bond with the consumer.

“We are engaging consumers on their turf, drawing them in and then turning them into customers,” explains Kyle Blades, Rebel’s founder and president.  This is different from current firms because Rebel does not just look at what to say and where to say it; they consider everything a company does that will effect a consumer’s perception.

The concept came to Mr. Blades on his second tour in Iraq.  He repeatedly heard reports of the economy worsening back home and knew what the problem was.  When he left for Iraq he worked for Harley-Davidson and could not believe the amount of money being wasted on marketing firms with little in return.  It was no surprise to him why companies that spent so much, for so little were having a tough time.

Rebel takes pride in being the cheapest option around.  Not because it cuts corners but rather because it focuses only on outreach that will have a real impact.  Due to the openness of their approach, Rebel often has a difficult time defining a tangible return on their clients’ investment.  “We increase their sales.  Call it what you want: we figure out how to get more people to buy their product or service,” defends Mr. Blades.

It is because they offer a way to reach consumers for so cheap that Rebel is poised to gain ground in the crowded marketing field.  They admit that if the economy was better they may never get a chance to prove their worth.  However, because of the condition of the economy, companies are giving them a shot and enjoying the success they are seeing.

“I was skeptical,” explains Adam Vanderveen, who used Rebel to launch his production company: Guerilla Creation.  “It was unlike anything I had ever hear of before so I figured it had to be either genius or idiotic.”  After his company launched and immediately started profiting, Mr. Vanderveen is leaning towards genius. 

It is undoubtedly different but in its short existence, Rebel has been able to prove that new ideas is exactly what companies need to increase their sales.  For more information on Rebel, please visit: timeforarebel.com.

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A Moment of Silence for The Recession

Tuesday, April 14th, 2009

After Rebel was featured in this week’s Milwaukee Business Journal section “Beat the Recession” we have decided to declare an end to its reign over us. No longer will The Recession control what we buy or how we do business. We will dedicate ourselves to finding new ways to defeat it.

Since this clearly signals the end for our longtime frenemy, we will be holding a moment of silence to remember The Recession. We ask that everyone takes a minute on Friday, from 9:00-9:01 am, to remember the times we shared with Recession.

To check out the article on what Rebel is doing to defeat The Recession, please visit: http://milwaukee.bizjournals.com/milwaukee/stories/2009/04/13/story12.html

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