One of the things I’ve been working on for the rebranding of One Degree 20th Anniversary is our resource dashboard. Right from the beginning of the web in ’92, I have been diligent in making and storing bookmarks. In the mid-nineties I created a site called Marketing Canada. It was a very successful … I was going to say “portal” but it was just a great new business tool for an agency I was running at the time. I may write a piece about that strategy later, “Promoting your ad agency online with a website that doesn’t suck!” MArketing Canada had over 70,000 members in under 3 months.
Yes, I know it is way faster and easier to “Google” something to get your answers. However I have been fortunate and quite successful in pitching new business. And one of the ways that I believe I was able to outsell my competition was in pre-sale and pre-pitch strategy. Notwithstanding I was always pretty good and dog and pony shows! Hell, just thinking … I won a really nice piece of business and during the pitch the VP Marketing fell asleep. Now to be fair she was up in years, it was 3pm on a warm afternoon and was soon replaced – I did like her though and tried NOT to wake her during the pitch. I think the marketing manager gave me extra points for that!
Years ago, pre-web, I was running a very large ad agency and to assist with competitive intelligence gathering I contracted a company called Macromedia. They were a small group, much like Bowden’s Press Clipping Service of old they had librarians on staff and when we were looking at pitching a company, I could phone my rep at Macromedia and give her the name of the company and in a day or so I’d end up with a 2 foot stack of paper on my desk. It had everything and more that I could think of about that company. Some of the things were probably irrelevant, but even an irrelevant fact stored in the back of my head came in handy while sitting chatting to a CEO.
I remember asking the president of Macromedia how many other ad agencies in Toronto at that time used their services … she told me I was the only one! And, they were not expensive!
So this directory dashboard has some old stuff there. Yep! But how I’ve always looked at all “stuff” is it might be a way to get you thinking differently, maybe see something your competitor isn’t seeing and maybe get you going in a new direction.
And the One Degree Resource Dashboard is user generated content so send in your suggestions. I have done a quick-and-dirty once-over on the listings for now but will really scrub them later (Done is better than n perfect!) so if you find something that is in error – please let me know!