"Gutsy Marketers"

As I write this post my ticker shows that the DJIA has fallen 7% today. Obviously there are many companies and individuals worried about survival in this current economic climate. For those more fortunate, "cost containment", "weathering the storm" and "efficient investment" are all terms that are still at the top of the priority list.

Burt Helm writes a solid article in the latest issue of Business Week in conjunction with its Best Global Brands feature that I found inspiring despite today's chaos.

Best Global Brands - Gutsy marketers spend into the teeth of a recession. Several of BusinessWeek's 100 Best Global Brands are doing exactly that

I thought the quote below was particularly interesting because it can apply to our business and the business of our customers.

"In good times, people are less apt to try new things. In bad times, they have to start to do things better." - Martin Puris (Ad exec who coined the phrase "The Ultimate Driving Machine" back in 1974 when consumer spending tanked and gas prices soared much like we are seeing today).

Don't assume that the only message here is to spend more to protect your brand or be a savvy marketer. The answer is much more strategic and involves a top-level directive that mobilizes your entire organization. Start answering the important questions like: how will we define success? What is the role of marketing in our organization? How do we communicate more effectively with our customers to show that we can offer a solution that helps them do things better?

In the B2B world we don't have the multi-million dollar marketing budgets but we are closer to our customers then a multi-national brand like Apple or Coca-Cola. We also are fortunate to be aligned with an industry that maintains extremely strong fundamentals and prospects for long-term growth. Let's not sell ourselves short on the invaluable resource we all can access even when capital is in short supply: creativity.

Online Advertising

There was a recent article in a publishing trade that does a fantastic job explaining the full power of online advertising. It is very easy to try to adapt consumer metrics to business to business media and become consumed with clicks, conversions and the ever-elusive ROI factor. I can assure you that there is no silver bullet. It will continue to be a challenge to quantify the direct impact of advertising, even as it moves online and we are able to leverage some extremely powerful technology tools.

The following chain of events explains how many people perceive online advertising and how many folks in my business sell it.

Impression -- Click -- Visit --Sale

This is a bit of an oversimplification but the point is that many can fall into a trap that either undervalues the investment or worse yet causes us to set an unreasonable expectation for measuring success.

Below is a more complete view:
























The more familiar we become with online advertising, the more we begin to understand the strengths of this medium (and weaknesses) and ways which we can create integrated programs that allow us to build our brand, deliver more information and reach well beyond the boundaries of print.

As more firms in our industry figure out a web strategy, the more challenging it will become to stand out in this high speed world. Therein lies the immediate opportunity: those who get there first will distance themselves quickly. If you are interested I have some multifamily-specific case studies that I would love to share. We will also be holding a seminar at the MFE Conference to give a primer to our exhibitors and sponsors firsthand.

There is no question that our customers are using the web to run their business and all of us should get engaged in the dialogue. It doesn't cost anything to explore and if nothing else it is exciting to see how the landscape is changing daily.

Click here for the complete article in Publishing Executive.

MFE Leadership Issue: November 2008

Many of you have seen the promotional material but I felt it was important to grab one of our editors to describe the Multifamily Executive Leadership Issue.

MFE's Annual Leadership Issue is due out in November and we are thrilled with the concept and excited to see the final execution. Many of Multifamily Executive advertisers are participating in this special issue and there is still time to add your name to the list. Click on the video below to here more about the project:



Here are some of the highlights:

Doing More with Less: Advice from top industry leaders about running a company during an economic slowdown

Culture Club: How different leadership methodologies affect company culture

Inspirational Anecdotes: The best lessons that industry leaders have learned

How They Lead: Profiles of military, political and cultural leaders and what multifamily management can learn from them

Leadership Lifestyles: Industry execs talk about their lifestyles and plans for the future

Fannie, Freddie & Multifamily: Business As Usual

Yesterday I called into a Conference Call that was graciously hosted by Peter Donovan and his team at the CBRE Multi Housing Group.

According to Phil Weber, (Senior Vice President of Multifamily, Fannie Mae) it will be "business as usual" for the multifamily group at Fannie Mae. He classified Fannie's book of business in multifamily as being in excellent shape and that the newly formed conservatorship will not change the current business model.

Peter Donovan indicated that even some of the larger multifamily transactions will not be subject to regulator review. Fannie and Freddie (although Mike May was not on the call) will continue to manage the day to day operations on the multifamily side.

Peter Donovan believes that this move by the government removes the uncertainty from the market and will have a positive impact on a multifamily market with extremely solid fundamentals.

Click here for a recording of the call.

There is quite a bit of interesting information in the first 30 minutes or so; it is worth a listen.