Last MBA Presentation

I know what you're thinking - student presentations in a business school mean wearing a suit. Well, you would be right.

Most of the time.

Looking down the halls of Rotman, you WILL see a sea of black suits, shiny shoes and ties. Not so in Marketing Using IT.

For the purpose of this presentation, this common beachwear was transformed with this:
Into Digital Marketing Executive.

Yes friends. Believe your eyes.

Seriously, stop rubbing your eyes! It's true! Our team was transformed from 'bum' into 'digital marketing executive' simply by adding a blazer, scarf and heel. This technique works for dudes as well! Your old band Ts and sports shirts are, in fact, professional when modestly covered with a suit jacket. Your old jeans are equally appropriate, with a pair of dress shoes. It's a miracle really.

Dear students doing presentations for such exciting classes like M&A, Value Investing, and Supply Chain Management. Don't be haters! I know you're jealous. I would be to - it's almost summer, the sun in shining and you are wearing black, constricting suits and I am wearing sandals and jeans.

There's not much I can do to help you work through your emotional feelings of anger and disbelief ("How on Earth can these jean wearing vagrants be earning a professional degree? It's not FAIR!"). Nor can I help you with your physical discomfort, ("This suit is so hot, I hope no one can tell how sweaty I am!"). I also can't help you stand out in your uniform ("Hey, nice suit! Is that 'midnight black' or 'nightshade'?)

Just know that I feel for you.

How did you spend your long weekend?

In Ontario, it's a long weekend. Civic Holiday long weekend to be exact. I'm not exactly sure what the significance of the day is, but any excuse for a long weekend, I'll accept.

Some people have chosen to go cottaging. For those of you not familiar with the practice, cottaging involves sitting in traffic on the highway for literally hours, cursing the slowness and heat of the highway. Eventually, you reach your destination: cottage. This is generally on a river or lake. In the case of my family, on an island. The weekend generally consists of lying on the beach, frolicking in the water, barbecueing and staying hydrated with whatever beverage you choose. It is a time to escape the concrete jungle, as downtown is sometimes referred. To enjoy time with friends and family and to generally relax.

Since I don't have a formal office job this summer, every weekend is an excuse to cottage... except this weekend, alas. I have spent the day analyzing content reports from Google Analytics for my digital strategy project (consulting work). While I'm not baking in the sun, I have been making significant progress. But the sunshine is calling and I am only steps from the Toronto Beach. How can I keep working when I know that the beach awaits?

Going Local? Not as easy as you would think!

The web has been hailed as the righteous hero for small businesses. A simple web page opens the door to the world, right? Plus, with the so-called built in accountability, each dollar is stretched as it is easy to measure what works and what doesn't...

But is the picture really all that rosy? Yes, the web has enabled e-commerce, effectively widening your potential market, but for a typical local business, the majority of sales come from closer to home. Take a car dealership for instance, a website is certainly necessary for client research purposes, but the sale will come from an in-store visit.

So... how easy is it for a local business to promote itself locally? When it comes to the web, it's not as easy and accountable as people assume.

As a media planner, I was responsible for national scale brands and had a plethora of tools at my disposal. Typically on a national scale, a company will focus on the major markets and allow spill to fill in the rest. When it comes to online media, looking for websites with a large composition of Canadian visitors (wherever they are located) is easy as the measurement tools are in place with a statistically significant panel in each market.

On the local level, this measurement does not exist. Local companies must rely on Search as their primary or only online marketing tool. Even then, there is only so granular you can get.

This lack of measurement and accountability on the small scale is a shame - particularly for the medium that has spent the last decade thumbing their nose at mass media (AKA: local media) for being wasteful. It is ironic that for a typical small business, without adequate local measurement, digital marketing is a really tough sell.