Category Archives: Affiliations

Great SVAMA Event w/ Carmine Gallo Yesterday

Posted on April 11, 2008 by Dr Chris L. Brown | Leave a comment

Yesterday afternoon we had an SVAMA-sponsored lunch presentation by Carmine Gallo. He presented topics from his new book, Fire Them Up via (Amazon), which discusses great communication techniques. However, more than simply summarizing his points, we were able to put the pieces into practice.

After explaining 7 components that fill in the acronym “INSPIRE” participants were asked to practice their elevator speeches, and the group and Carmine offered critiques. It was funny, one after the other the pitches improved: Bad pitch, critique, better pitch, critique, great pitch. I was reminded of the book Made to Stick which gives a similar set of techniques that anyone can use to improve the resonance of their message. I do appreciate these techniques that work no matter who uses them.

The INSPIRE acronym:

I – Ignite your own enthusiasm
N – Navigate the way with a consistent memorable vision
S – Sell the benefit by putting your listeners first
P – Paint a picture with powerful, memorable, actionable stories
I – Invite participation by asking for input and dealing with objections
R – Reinforce an optimistic outlook by becoming a beacon of hope
E – Encourage people to reach their potential by praising and investing in them

Green Building in China

Posted on December 5, 2007 by Dr Chris L. Brown | 1 comment

This post is a slight diversion from what most of this blog will cover, but I feel it’s important. And, in so far as this site is about innovative ideas about meeting stated and unstated needs, this idea is right on the mark.

Today I attended a small showing for a video entitled Green Dragon. The premise was centered around the massive amounts of new buildings going up in China, the great migration of their population to urban zones and their impact on the worldwide environment. (Did you know around 25% of the smog over LA is from particles produced in the Middle Kingdom?) More importantly, however, the film spoke about the great opportunities there are to make this process “green.”

In many ways China is already more green than the United States. Nearly all lightbulbs in their urban centers are compact flourescent. (I’m only about halfway in my own house. The whole city of Shanghai has me beat.) They have an extremely effecient privatized recycling system in which private citizens peddle around neighborhoods buying recyclable trash and bringing it to processing centers. And they’re building the first carbon-neutral city in the world. Developer’s site. Consulatant’s site. Here’s a BBC excerpt on the city. The senior architect is one of the folks interviewed for this video.

In many more ways, however, China lags far behind the rest of the world in environmental awareness and activity. Rivers run brown, forests are cut down for chopsticks and nearly every urban center is surrounded in thick, horrible smog. The opportunity to do significant good exists there, and the people, government and builders are smart, educated of the problem and willing to be part of the solution — that was a major takeaway for me from this film.

This project was done by a friend of mine, Max Perelman (bio), with Caroline Campbell (bio) and River Lu (bio) both of whom I’ve also had the great pleasure of meeting. Cool cats. The video is currently being shopped to various distributors but I’ve been promised that a YouTube trailer would be available soon. I’ll be sure to make that available once I have access to it.

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Posted in Affiliations, Innovative Thought

Tagged china, dongtan, film, green building, green dragon, innovation, sustainability

Sean Gallagher speaks at the CEO Club of Boston

Posted on December 4, 2007 by Dr Chris L. Brown | Leave a comment

Last month our Chief Value Delivery Officer, Sean Gallagher, spoke at the CEO Club of Boston (another link) about how a Market Culture provides the blueprint for profitable companies. We call this the DNA of Profitable Businesses, and this lies at the core of the message we try to bring out.

Our message is simple: Corporate culture is important to business success. It is the core blueprint around which all other building blocks are placed. It is the framework under which company value get passed along. Exec to employee. Old hand to new recruit. Can’t overlook culture.

What we’re doing is bringing a new understanding to this. We have developed a measurement tool for this and will be rolling it out in the new year. (Ssshh, don’t tell anyone I told you!) Once you can measure it, you can compare it. If it’s low, you can improve it. (We offer training services for this.) If it’s high, you can demand more from your organization.

Knowledge is power and in 2008 we will be offering a kind of knowledge you never knew you could have!

SVAMA November Program on Social Media Public Relations

Posted on November 20, 2007 by Dr Chris L. Brown | Leave a comment

Last week Thursday evening the Silicon Valley American Marketing Association (SVAMA) held an event in conjunction with the Silicon Valley Association of Startup Entrepreneurs (SVASE) on the topic of utilizing social media technologies (blogs, podcasts, RSS, and the like) successfully in an integrated public relations campaign.The moderator was Mike Manuel from Voce Communications and the author of the Media Guerrilla blog.Mark Coker from the Dovetail PR agency was a panelist, as were Brian Warren of OuterJoin and Jeff Rubenstein of Sony Playstation (USA).My sincere thanks to these gentlemen for their participation!The topics discussed ranged quite greatly and reflected the diverse nature of all the attendees. They covered, how does a tech-unsavvy person get into this (just get out there and start typing) to how do I justify online PR activities to reluctant decision makers who also happen to handle budgets (by integrating Web 2 technologies into a fully integrated comm strategy that includes time-proven media vehicles).The event was a great success with over 100 attendees from both organizations and the public at large. Adobe Systems hosted the event in their LEED Certified building. They offered a great conference room and a great spread of food and refreshments.In full disclosure, MarketCulture Strategies has a deep interest in the SVAMA as two of our team (including myself) are members of the board. I find my participation in the group to really help me stay on top of current marketing issues, which I think is extremely important here in Silicon Valley. Moreover it provides great networking opportunities. Over time I can see the organization being mentioned a lot on this blog.