ink Communications, the team that brings you Tattletech, has a new Facebook page where you can try to keep up with all their international doings.
To celebrate the launch of the page, they have put together a contest based on their popular TRUE/ink Drinks Manual (which you can flip through below), a mixological must full of cocktails from the team, their friends, clients, lovers and enemies.
The contest? Submit your own cocktail worthy of the book and win the ingredients to make it, the actual Drinks Manual and two Baccarat Crystal Vega martini glasses! Been sitting on a gilded lobster, diamond-laced martini recipe? Now’s the time to break it out!
2.) Post a cocktail suggestion on the wall. Be sure not to double up on what is already in the book and keep it in the style of the other recipes. Be sure to leave your name, affiliation and Twitter handle.
3.) Three Winners will be chosen on November 30, 2011.
4.) The new TRUE/ink cocktail books will be printed and you can get one at our next event or we will mail it to you via that good old fashioned snail mail!
ink Communications founder, Jennifer Hicks was referenced in the article by the reporter on her opinions on the initiative. [this is the complete Q & A which was excerpted in the article here]
eCommerce Times: Working with start up companies, what do you think of this initiative? Is it needed? Or is it a gimmick?
Jennifer Hicks: As a niche global PR agency that works with start ups around the world, we think it is a great idea. In many ways, Europe has been doing this on a country by country level with their incubator programs through the governments with small seed funds that provide both cash and resources. Silicon Valley is purely driven by the next big thing, but this program is a good way to continue to foster and grow the entrepreneurial spirit not just with start ups but with small companies with revenue that also need to push into regional or international markets.
The more global a company can be from birth the better. Finland is a great example of a country that despite its small GDP, puts a large amount funding, both private and public, into innovation programs for start ups or small companies across ICT, Clean tech, Life Sciences and eHealth.
ECT: Lots of tech giants have signed on. What might that say about it?
JH: I think that tech giants today are struggling to find their relevance with innovation. I mean to say that the standard methodology is to just acquire and absorb, but what if they have the opportunity to foster and incubate without a tie back to their own company? I think the world is global and tech giants still search for that next big thing. Microsoft invested a lot in outside vendors to bring Kinect to life and that investment for the first Kinect boxes came from a start up out of Israel that supplied the natural interface technology. So I think that in many ways, they need the agility and innovative thinking that comes out of start ups.
ECT: The Obama Administration has been criticized for being unfriendly to business, and for having too few business people in its ranks. Do you think this foundation will help raise awareness — a key public relations endeavor — in the Administration about the needs and importance of entrepreneurship?
JH: All change requires time, but I do think that any initiative a government or administration can take to back innovation will only help the country in the long term. When you think about change in terms of technology, we should be looking at investment into technology that feeds the sectors most likely to affect us in the long run – health, clean tech, services – and the application of innovation into those markets will, over time, affect citizens and how they interact with their environment, their health care providers and the businesses they interact with.
Tough week, even though it ended in Barcelona, it was the final event of the 2010 and we give thanks. But the week did bring some insight we can’t even print here, but what we did learn we will share with you.
1. Barcelona is really pretty at Christmas time and all those annoying sweaty tourists are joyously missing.
2. When you approach a table with three VC’s and not one of them gets up to 1) offer you a chair or 2) offer you a glass of wine from the bottle they have on the table; They are just impolite and have no manners. Run away.
3. Surprisingly, it is still very much a man’s world when it comes down to old school networking and investment discussion.
4. If a man turns to you and says, don’t worry we are just talking about VC stuff, walk away, that guy is a jerk.
5. People take advantage.
6. Reality is a prison.
7. Fishnets with a knee-length black dress are a perfectly acceptable attire for a cocktail party with uptight European VCs and money men in Barcelona at La Pedrera.
8. Clean tech is sexy, ICT is a boring piece of re-hashed, re-heated slop.
9. If the bartender can’t make a Gin martini, leave.
10. If a man walks into a dinner meeting already making excuses for how tired he is, or how busy he is or how annoyed he is by his own circumstances, get sick and leave.
A great replay of why PR doesn’t work anymore. If you have 57 minutes, start at slide 14 and sit back and remember, its not the news its the story. Tell the story.
We’ve been saying this for years, now it looks like others are finally starting to notice the genius coming out of Europe‘s young tech community. Milo Yiannopoulous starts us off with his top ten list of innovative European companies that are blazing the trail in taking on Silicon Valley‘s reputation. We think there are a lot of others (I see a future post here), but he’s got a pretty good start with his WSJ Europe article, naming our client – PrimeSense – as one of them doesn’t hurt.
We said it here first – Europe is comin’ for ya, Silicon Valley!
So yea…. we have found ourselves at the head of whirlwind tour starting on December 5 that takes us to Dusseldorf for e-Unlimited’s European Venture Summit. This is the last stop for those hoping to go onto the finals in Barcelona also known as the Eurocan European Venture Contest. The reason we like being a part of this VC/Tech ecosystem, is that despite its buttoned-down atmosphere, it really is a place where VCs – seed and upwards – come to shop. We will be there as a mentor and coach on the prep day, but also as a judge to select those that will move on to the final and have their dreams come true.
So here’s one we want to tell you about. On the move from Nordic Venture Summit to EVS is Defendec, a new start up out of Estonia. And guess what they do? They are a low-power wireless detection system for vulnerable borders which detects infrastructure sabotage or asset thefts, illegal crossing at international borders and monitors tactical operations areas. Ok, that doesn’t sound too sexy does it? But think about all the millions of miles of borders on this big old planet and think about everything from drugs to people to power stations to well, just about anything that is critical infrastructure. If you are living in a cabin in the Alps with only candles or are that Hermoine Way chick who claims to live out of one suitcase, you might not care, but the rest of the planet is a bit vulnerable and remote and gee, can’t be monitored remotely in an energy efficient way. Thus Defendec.
“You can survive a lot of things if your CEO loves you and very little otherwise.”
Okay….Tattletech has been spending a lot of time lately listening to companies and hearing their woes when it come to getting into the marketplace they want to get into. It’s no mean feat being responsible for marketing within a hi-tech company. For a start, you are usually the only one who believes in it, understands it and (battles to) implement it.
Add to the mix, if you will then, the typical CEO who, again, often brilliant, has a ‘challenging time’ communicating with us mere mortals, let alone those who look after non-technical aspects of the business namely, marketing and communications. These guys (yes mostly) ‘wag the dog’ and if they, for instance, don’t like journalists or ‘don’t have time for marketing’ the role of marcomms becomes that of a lobbiest, evangelist, teacher and perhaps even masochist. Often an agency or consultant is brought in to blaze the trail or offer ‘expert advice’ in an effort to shift mindset and convince. At times like this the tension in the room is almost palpable!
There are exceptions – heard of Apple? The technology company that executes marketing well is changing the way we communicate and has a CEO of the decade by Fortune magazine.
What follows are some rules by Rob Enderle, president and principal analyst of the Enderle Group, on how to make the most of that dream IT marketing job … and how to survive it! Enjoy and take heart!
Rule No. 1: Learn from the Last CMO’s Mistakes and Successes
I was tempted to suggest you might want to sacrifice a chicken on the first day of the job. Instead, find out as much as you can about why the person you are replacing didn’t make it. Chances are that person was forced out, even if people initially tell you otherwise.
Rule No. 2: Learn the Power Structure
I can’t tell you the number of CMOs who didn’t realize in time that they were subordinated to division managers and often the marketing directors who reported to them. It is easy to fall in love with an organizational chart that puts you next to the CEO, but often that job is actually rather junior.
Rule No. 3: Own Your Metrics
You probably know that marketing metrics suck. They are largely unreliable and it is likely vastly easier to count the whiskers on an angel than to know at any given time how well or poorly your team is doing. However, it is in your best interest to make sure these metrics reflect as accurately as possible your contribution to sales. If you don’t own them, you can’t assure this, and you’ll likely find the metrics work against you.
Rule No. 4: Build a Qualified Team Loyal to You
As CMO, you are under siege. The last thing you need to worry about is one of your own people using your corpse as a stepping-stone to the next promotion. I’ve watched a lot of folks get shot down because their people did something either intentionally or accidentally that resulted in major problems for the company. Chances are your predecessor had this problem. One of the first things you have to do is make sure that any problem children in your new organization become someone else’s problem children.
Rule No. 5: Find Out What the CEO Wants (And Avoid Making Him or Her Look Stupid)
CEOs either want to meet celebrities, see themselves on TV, give presentations to large audiences, and/or be seen as a hero at the company or be totally invisible. Either way, they aren’t too fond of being pilloried or looking bad – EVER This suggests that you find out what the CEO wants to do in terms of public image and then you make sure no problems come from that.
Rule No 6: Own your Agencies – Don’t Let Them Own You
I’ve seen a lot of advertising and PR disasters over the years. Generally they have resulted from poor ownership over the process and one or more of these vendors behaving badly. The practice of bringing in an agency you know and love is a best practice, assuming the existing agency isn’t closely tied to an executive or board member. Like your employees, you want the agency to have your needs and reputation as its top priority.
Wrapping Up: The CMO is a Job at Risk
I’ve often thought that CMO should stand for Chief Masochistic Officer in technology companies because the deck is stacked against the successful execution of this job.
This sound helpful? Well today in the Blur Group blog, we read a similiar story about whats happening in the ecosystem of advertising… where agencies, once fat on the vine, now are rebuilding themselves in their own image..creating an agency in the eyes of an agency. The game is changing… are you?
This post is a little late – but after a busy week from being on the road and at the TechCrunch Europas… we had to let it all setttle a bit. Here are things we learned this past week:
2. Never start buying cocktails for a group of people who have had too much to drink and just put it on your hotel bill. The next day, you will not be happy.
3. Emerging tech/VC events are really just like a one-day summer camp reunion, nothing more. Be seen, have some drinks, go out later.
4. No matter how much funding a start-up has, with an un-experienced marketing person at the helm, you will zig and zag all over the place and get no where.
5. A good marketing person steers the ship with ease, but even they can’t control an eratic CEO.
6. Investors should not be doing PR of any form for their portfolio companies. Nada. Zip. Zero. So cut it out.
7. Apps still won’t work without network coverage or WiFi, let’s fix that.
8. How long can you coast on luck or self-deprecation? Pretty long apparently according to some.
9. You can not launch a product in 2 days.
10. There is only noise at big trade shows, not noise. Don’t be delusional in thinking otherwise.
11. Old school 80s style PR is dead. Today it’s a jagged, volatile communications landscape that’s all about targeting, social, issue hi-jacking, thought-leadership & disruptive concepts.
Well it’s that time of year again when you can cast your vote for Europe’s best companies in the start up scene in the Europas (use #TheEuropas for Twitter)- from best mobile, music or video or social innovation start up to best service provider to learning start up and even a start up founder. All you have to do is go here — and vote!
Then on November 19, get yourself to London and see who won and then celebrate just cause you can.
Posted by Tattletech on Oct 22, 2010 in Uncategorized
We love this time of the week, we feel like we are brimming with stuff we learned. Why didn’t we do this before?
Well anyway, it’s here now, so without further ado, here are the things we have learned this week.
1. The real meaning behind social networking is when a friendship you have made on Twitter spills over into your real life. That is the coolest experience and let’s me know that there is validity in those online connections. This week I felt like I came away from summer camp with a new friend and all over powder-blueMC Hammer pants. That old Faberge commercial [WATCH THAT VIDEO], she told two friends and so on, was spot on. So thank you @helenbrown (the founder of a great company Cat Walk Genius) for pointing out on Twitter that powder-blue MCHammer pants were making a come-back and introducing me to @carolineno.
2. London is really expensive, still.
3. Mobile is NOT the poster child for convergence, in reality it is more like divergence out there. Single biggest hold up despite all the shiny happy apps and multitude of things you can do. Good fracking networks. Please, give us some good networks. According to a panel at Tech Media Invest in London with Andrew Scott from Rummble and Jeff Coe of Linden Ventures, so many issues still exist that either we fix em now or just skip to 5G.
4. What goes around comes around.
5. According to Enrica Pezzi, who runs the Italian super PR agency, Puntoeacapo. you can’t manage a blog or social media completely scientifically. You still need messages and content to tell a story and sometimes that means more than just numbers.
6. Nothing beats a new hair cut and color at a tony salon in Mayfair. That’s like teflon. Change your hair, change your life.
7. When you introduce a beautiful, tall leggy blond as a Greek aristocrat and real estate tycoon to a room of VCs in the start up tech world, they actually look like a deer caught in headlights and stop and listen to what you are saying. It’s pretty epic.
