Author Archives: RussellBenghiat
Brand Story. WWPD – What Would Pixar Do?
You don’t create a brand. Your brand already exists. Your job is to extract the essence of your brand and then tell its story. Easier said than done. So where to start? Let’s turn to one of today’s premier storytellers, Pixar Animation Studios. Pixar has won 27 Academy Awards. Its first feature film? Toy Story. [...]
Make hay while the sun shines.
NAFEM 2013 exhibited very positive vibes. The mood was as sunny inside as the bright Orlando day outside. Although the aisles were not jammed with attendees, an overwhelming majority of the exhibitors with whom I spoke were quite pleased with the results. This was an improvement over NAFEM 2011, which was cautiously optimistic. And quite [...]
Planning your marketing campaign? SmartMarketing™ Checklist helps you quickly prioritize tactics.
How best to allocate your marketing budget to produce meaningful results? One of the tools we developed to guide the planning process is a focused, tactical checklist. You will increase planning efficiency – and save boatloads of time – when you use our SmartMarketing™ Checklist. The SmartMarketing™ Checklist works whether your approach to planning is [...]
How to stand out from hundreds of competing trade show exhibits.
The aisles were not all that crowded from the projected 30,000 attendees at IHMRS in NYC in November. Yet, some booths remained consistently busy while others were mostly dead. Why the difference? Based on my observations, busy booths were staffed by engaging, purposeful, positive individuals. Also the busy booths clearly displayed operator benefits, while quiet [...]
Hurricane Sandy prevents several companies from exhibiting at IHMRS
Although IHMRS sent a pre-show/post-Sandy email that assured “…all areas of the Javits Center remain fully available to the IHMRS” they didn’t mention that IHMRS also offered exhibitors the chance to back out because of shipping and other concerns. Nor did they mention that several companies lost their displays when the staging warehouse flooded in [...]
Convert more: The inescapable 80/20 rule of sales leads
Too many companies focus on generating new leads to fill the pipeline. Too few companies concentrate on increasing the percent of leads that convert to sales. Here’s the ugly truth: 80% of sales occur after the 5th contact, but only 20% of leads are followed up. (Sources: SiriusDecisions, Aberdeen Group) Imagine the positive impact on [...]
SmartMarketing™ 101
Decades ago – when I was a young associate creative director at Johnson & Dean – I grappled daily with the sign that my Creative Director, Jim Ens, had taped up on the wall above his desk. SIMPLIFY SIMPLIFY SIMPLIFY Although Jim was indeed a very creative guy, he certainly didn’t birth this concept. In [...]
