Author Archives: Crystal Jones

About Crystal Jones

Crystal Jones is the Director of Marketing at The Mpower Group (TMG). She has over 12 years of marketing experience specializing in B2B marketing for consulting companies. Crystal is actively involved in many organizations, including the Business Marketing Association (BMA). She also has her Master's Degree in Marketing from Johns Hopkins University.

What If Your GPS Tells You to Turn Around?

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Last week I took a nice, relaxing vacation. We didn’t want to spend a lot of money on anything fancy, so my husband and I packed up the Jeep, loaded the dogs, and headed out. We stayed with family in a beautiful house in rural Kentucky, or what my husband kept referring to as the Hollers of Kentucky. I have to admit that after the traffic and congestion of Chicago, I was very happy to get to fresh air and a slower pace.

One day, we decided to head out on an adventure, so we just started driving. For hours we drove with the sunroof open, the windows down, listening to the road mix my husband pulled together. You know Willie Nelson, Lyle Lovett, Johnny Cash – perfect music for our excursion. The roads weaved through acres and acres of beautiful farmland, pristine horse farms, and miles of forest-covered hills. Most of the roads were one lane, so things got pretty hairy when another car headed our way.

As we were driving, we would check the GPS just to see where we were. However, at one point the GPS showed no road where obviously there was one because we were bouncing along listening to, if I remember correctly, Waylon Jennings (remember my husband pulled the music mix together). The GPS blinked U-Turn. I could even mentally hear it screaming at us to turnaround, but we kept going. Eventually we came to the end of the road after passing some of the most beautiful scenery I have seen. The trees were bright green and a lazy river flowed past in no particular hurry. It was a moment where you climb out of the car, take a breath, and think I am so glad I didn’t turnaround. I kept my course, and I came out the other side better than where I started. My husband looked at me and said, “If we had listened to the GPS, we never would have seen this.” That got me thinking.

I know this isn’t the usual business strategy, training, marketing blog, but this has been a tough week – September 11 anniversary, embassy killings, political gaming, teacher strikes, so I wanted to share my own personal story with you. Something that says, even if we feel we are on the wrong track, even if the economy feels dismal, even if we feel that things are going wrong, or we feel that we need to turnaround – that the risk is too great. Don’t do it. The path might be rocky. You might be pushed off the road by cars coming at you. Your husband’s musical choices might be questionable. But keep going. At the end, you might find yourself in a place you didn’t even imagine.

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What Does Facebook and a Birkenstock Have in Common?

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And here is it, the inevitable Internet Marketing/Social Media backlash. We all saw it coming. It was like watching a car crash in a 3D movie where is starts off in slow motion as it heads your way and then suddenly the action moves into real time and the crash ends up right in your lap.

The catalyst for the crash seems to be the IPOs of Groupon and Facebook. The IPOs were initially greeted with fanfare and pageantry and then BOOM! CRASH! They resulted in a botched IPO and accounting issues. And now we have a giant mess sitting in our laps.

It all seems to boil down to the fact that neither business model was sustainable. In fact, Groupon is now changing its business model and moving away from Daily Deals. But will this help? The Internet is littered with articles on how Groupon doesn’t help small businesses and in some instances hurts them. Is it too little too late?

With Facebook, the issue is similar. It all comes down to the effectiveness of the advertising. Can companies that advertise on Facebook make money? And how do you get users to pay attention to advertisements without them being in your face and obnoxious. On top of that, do “Likes” really result in measureable revenue for companies?

So, I started thinking about my own use of Groupon and Facebook. I will start with Facebook because that is the service I use the most. Now I cannot say that I am a typical Facebook user. I am not on it often and when I am I find myself getting quickly tired of it (I mean how many cat photos/videos are there and where are they coming from). The best part to me is being able to keep in touch with friends and family that don’t live near me. So I am not that person that is sitting on it all day Liking this and that, and I rarely post. I don’t follow too many companies. I mainly follow bands and interesting blogs.

Ironically enough I follow Groupon on Facebook, mainly out of curiosity. I would categorize them as power users. They try very hard to engage with people. They post photos, start conversations, answer questions, etc.  I have only purchased one Groupon and it was for 50% off of a massage years ago. When I receive a Groupon  I think “do I need that right now?” and the answer is usually “no.”

Peter Cohan in his article “Why Groupon Is Over and Facebook and Twitter Should Follow” likens Facebook to a drug. Facebook was engaging when it fun, new, and interesting. But now Facebook feels like an old pair of shoes. You know those old, smelly Birkenstocks that you bring out every summer?  They are fairly comfortable. You know you should stop wearing them. They don’t really go with anything and are out of style. The smell annoys your family and friends. But you feel an emotional attachment, and you just can’t bear to let them go. But one day you will stop wearing them. You will lose one, or your significant other will stage a secret offensive and throw them out, but I can guarantee that you will move on. You will find the new shiny pair of shoes.

The same is true for anything on the Internet. The Internet is highly dynamic. It is always changing and people are always looking for that great new way to engage. That is why the IPOs were such bad ideas. An IPO in its nature denotes permanency. But not much on the Internet is permanent. It is only a matter of time before people move away from sites like Groupon and Facebook completely and move on to the next new thing. Do I even need to bring up MySpace?

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Come Back! You Forgot to Buy Something!

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I love to read. I have to admit that it is one of my passions in life, perhaps not terribly exciting, but books bring things to life for me in ways that TV and oftentimes movies never can. The images come into my mind and I can see the characters just as I would see something on screen. The difference is that I get to choose how something looks, how something feels. The tone is mine. It is not dictated to me.

I just finished John Steinbeck’s East of Eden written in 1952. It was truly fabulous and it is now in my top five list of the best books I have ever read.  While working my way through the pages, I found a section that was very interesting. It is at the beginning of Part 2 as Steinbeck talks about the beginning of the 20th century. He writes:

“It is true that two men can lift a bigger stone than one man. A group can build automobiles quicker and better than one man, and bread from a huge factory is cheaper and more uniform. When our food and clothing and housing all are born in the complication of mass production, mass method is bound to get into our thinking and to eliminate all other thinking. In our time mass or collective production has entered our economics, our politics, and even our religion.”

So the 20th century went by with mass everything: mass marketing, mass consumerism, mass production. As long as we could do it faster, cheaper, and produce more we felt like we were making progress, things were moving forward. But now the 21st century has dawned. And what a change that has brought. So far it is a century of profound change that is both good and bad. With the rebellion, economic concerns, and general discontent it seems this is a century that no one has settled comfortably into yet.

The current century seems to be a reversal on the last 100 years. I am not here to declare the end of mass production and mass marketing. I think there will always be a need for those things. However, have we lost our satisfaction with these things? Is the honeymoon over? Are we now seeing the rise of the individual?

Growing up there was no Internet. We bought what was sold at Kmart or Sears, and living in rural Pennsylvania let me just say that the options were limited. We had four TV channels: NBC, ABC, CBS, and eventually Fox. To this day they still haven’t run cable lines out to my parents and growing up we couldn’t afford satellite. So we consumed what was available. What companies gave us to consume. But now things have changed, people no longer are limited to consuming only what is available in their little slice of the world.  Now everything is available from anywhere in the world anytime.

I can buy anything I want with a click of a mouse. If I can’t buy it online I can find what store has it, how much it is, and schedule a time to pick it up. I can now express myself in ways that I never thought possible. Now more than ever what you buy and where you buy it from reflects on you as an individual. If what I want isn’t mass produced or I don’t want to buy something mass produced, I can go on Etsy and find something handcrafted. I can support my local artists and small businesses by sharing my stories online through Pinterest or Facebook. These stories will then point me to a group of people the share my passions, my joys, and my frustrations.

What does all of this mean for business? Are we fully aware of the implications of such a change? A dramatic shift has happened.  Businesses are no longer dictating what consumers want through limited channels. Consumers are now dictating how businesses need to act, how they want marketing people to interact with them, where they want to buy something. And if they aren’t happy, companies hear about it quickly and loudly. You are probably thinking, “Yeah. Sure. Heard it before.” I know this information isn’t new, but have we grasped the implications of such a change? I don’t think we have yet.

The companies that are now most successful are the ones that have adjusted to this shift like Amazon, Starbucks, and Apple. They are the ones that are listening and letting their customers guide them. However, those organizations seem few and far between. Most seem to be standing their ground, falling behind, and screaming at people as they pass “Come Back! You Forgot to Buy Something” as they disappear into the horizon.

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The Tortoise and the Hare

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I hope you enjoyed your Fourth of July. Besides the heat it was a great day, and when you live in Chicago heat beats cold any day. I am sure many of you are enjoying a nice long break, one of the perks of the holiday being on a Wednesday. I have to admit that my commute was much easier.

I am sitting here, wracking my brain, trying to think about what to write about. Something that is topical and relevant, but I think my brain is working slower due to all of the sunshine and BBQ I enjoyed yesterday. Everyone must feel this way, because I am looking through the business news and see not much of note. I could talk about the winner of Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest, but I will save that gem for another day.

During my morning news rounds I did come across this article called “The Wimpy Way to be Fearless: Just Do it for 10 Minutes” by Laura Brady Saade. This article fits my mood perfectly, light with just the right amount of advice. I don’t know about you, but I have a good amount of anxiety about trying new things, especially now that things in business and life in general are changing so quickly. It seems that every day is a Brave New World, and we don’t have an instruction manual on how to tackle some of the challenges that we are facing.

Saade describes herself as “a slow and steady girl: I do ambitious things (climbing Mount Whitney; running marathons), but very slowly.” She goes on to say that she felt that without bursts of energy, she couldn’t get things done. The solution to her dilemma was to dedicate at least ten minutes a day to a task until the task was done. She says that the plan is perfect for people with the following symptoms.

  • Short attention span
  • Lots of other pulls on your time
  • Dread of unpleasant tasks
  • Fear of not succeeding at something new
  • Worry that you’ll be devastated if you put too much heart and soul into something and then fail

I don’t know about you, but these symptoms fit me perfectly. I have those occasional bursts of energy, but what I accomplish is usually something new that was not on my to-do list. I have piles of books that I intend on reading (not counting what is on my iPad); my desk looks like a tornado hit it with white papers, proposals, and article drafts scattered everywhere; and my attempts at new projects (making macarons) usually wait and wait until the initial excitement wears off (which doesn’t take long considering my short attention span).

However, I think this 10-minute plan is perfect for today’s professional. We have a lot of pulls on our time, and much of our time seems to be consumed with learning new skills and tackling uncharted projects. This is where procrastination comes in. Why worry about that new project when I can work on something safe and familiar? The 10-minute plan can help us take down the barriers and fear and tackle things head-on, and once we start we will forget why we were worried to begin with. I can’t help thinking about the old Aesop fable “The Tortoise and the Hare.” Does slow and steady always win the race?

Are you the Tortoise or the Hare?

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What Is a Millennial to Do?

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Lately, I have been thinking about Anne’s blog post from a few weeks ago called Next Practices with “Generation Next.”  In the article, she talks about Millennials (folks born between 1980 and 1995), and since I was born in 1980, I guess I fit into this category. Anne talks about the needs and wants of people of my generation. She listed things like flexibility, good pay, work/life balance, and interesting work as factors that are important. Her article was spot on. But my question is this – is the ability to get positions that offer these benefits realistic in today’s market?

I am sure many of you have seen the “You Are Not Special” Commencement Speech.  In the speech, David McCullough Jr. says “Do whatever you do because you love it and believe in its importance.” This is a fantastic sentiment and fits in with much of the Millennial rhetoric. But then Google “College Graduate Unemployment” and article after article pops up stating that one in two college graduates are either unemployed or underemployed.  Add to that the student loan debt and lower median wages and it looks like dreaming will need to wait. Many talk about the student loan bubble, but what about the emotional toll created from such a job market?

There is a lot of doom and gloom and an apparent disconnect between expectations vs. reality. The general feeling seems to be that we are too pampered and expect too much. That might be the case, but my generation is also resourceful, intelligent, and hard working. I see a big shift happening. Where the job market is not providing opportunities for my generation, we seem to be pretty good at going out and creating our own.

I moved to Chicago a year and half ago for various reasons. I knew no one, but I realized that I had to put myself out there. I started networking and meeting people at various functions. Many people I talked to have gotten tired of trying to navigate through a nearly impossible job market and have decided to make it go on their own terms, whether through tech startups or bakeries started out of kitchens. For these folks it is more about doing what they believe in and succeeding on their own terms. I am not saying that all of these ventures will become multibillion dollar companies, but maybe that isn’t the point.

I see this as a shift as my generation ages and gets more experience. If the old rules aren’t working for us, we will create our own. Perhaps we all still have the rebellious teenager inside us. The same teenager that sat in the hot sun one June day, diploma in hand, feeling like she could take on the world.

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