Digital Marketing Strategy, PR and Messaging
Being the victim of fraud is one of the most excruciating pains for the psyche. There’s not a moment that passes when you don’t think of yourself as stupid and dumb (probably the very same thing) for falling for it. Especially when the tells were there.
I am a marketing professional. I like to think I’m pretty keen on knowing when something smells rotten. But it was the perfect storm, so let me tell you about it so perhaps you’ll recognize the signs a lot faster than I did. [Read more…]
What will 2016 hold for you? Will you have a chance to be authentic? Or will you keep the same old business practice and just manage in the Year of Fear 2016?
I have a bunch of marketing predictions, and they are based on the following factors. [Read more…]
There are too many stories of friends, family and neighbors with dementia getting scammed by a crook who wants their money or valuables. It saddens me immensely. That’s why I immediately sat down to write after reading this Wall Street Journal article, ‘Dementia-Friendly’ Cities.
Turns out that Paynesville, Minn., a town of 2,400 friendlies, is ‘dementia friendly’ and they nurture dementia.
That means the folks who live, work, sleep and eat in this small Midwestern community are nurturing their elders and being kind to a aging disease no one wants, everyone fears, and for which there’s no cure.
I applaud and admire the elders of Paynesville who created this nurturing dementia mentality.
The article states, “The number of Americans 65 and older with Alzheimer’s, the most common form of dementia, is projected to rise 40 percent over the next 10 years, to 7.1 million from 5.1 million, according to the Alzheimer’s Association, a national nonprofit group.”
Apparently, the movement to nurture dementia is taking off in Florida, Tennessee, Wisconsin, Arizona, and West Virginia, to name a few. There is a national pilot program called Dementia Friendly America modeled on the work in Paynesville and Minnesota’s 36 dementia-friendly communities that is turnkey for other locations to help those 65+ manage this age-intensifying condition.
Cross-disciplinary organizations often collaborate to put such programs in place. In Paynesville, there are volunteers who help with caregiving, buying the groceries, with yard work, and more. Foundations and healthcare companies also help implement the community-wide programming so that people with dementia and their loved ones can receive some comfort on their path.
The public relations aspect of this national program provides great opportunity for collaborative community relations with the goal of helping humanity. It’s heart marketing at its finest, and you all know by now I have a podcast called, The Heart Of Marketing.
Before the disruption in technology began to turn entire sectors on their heads, we did grassroots public relations. We built relationships in communities with influencers and leaders. We listened to the community to understand problems they wanted solved. We heard from businesses about their resources they wanted to put into play in the communities. We approached foundations and non-profits to see what role they wanted to be accountable for. We set out to change mindset and cultural shift.
Plans were drawn up. Everyone got marching orders. Action happened, and goals were reached with good-old community relations and relationship building. This was all before the time of social media; it was called traditional public relations.
For a national program like this, more people can be reached. There are more ways to engage families of people with dementia and to nurture dementia with technology.
I’m so happy the Wall Street Journal covered this PR story. It’s a good thing when we get to read news of collaboration and the principles of heart marketing that I tout on my podcast with John Gregory Olson. When your role is oriented to caring for a community, you need to constantly adapt with the needs of the people.
No offense Rance Crain. In my book anything the Crains do is golden, coming from a Chicago girl (no I’m not native, but my child IS, so there). I will cancel after subscribing for many years as a loyal customer of the print edition.
Alas, we ‘fair to middlin’ (what my grampa used to say)’ marketers no longer compute. We don’t have the advertising dollars to play in the same sandbox as the big guns, and the reporting shows.
Used to be, back in the day, that everyone offered full-service marketing. , and so do you. Anyone hailing from the agency world knows that it’s full service or no service. Whether or not we had the competency to say we offered full-service marketing, we went and got it to compete for the coveted client retainer.
Nothing much has changed since then; except, well, technology. Technology has fully disrupted the marketing blend, or rather it has ‘interrupted’ it as per the op-ed in by Ken Wheaton on July 13, 2015.
Regardless of how you view technology and whether it has your daily grind, one thing is clear. The chaotic complexity is here to stay, and it has made full-service marketing extinct, like a dinosaur. [Read more…]
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