Francis Moran
In the Media
10 tips for marketing in a downturn
This post is gaining an unexpected life of its own. I originally developed this list for an interview I did with the Ottawa Business Journal on marketing through a downturn. Since only a few of these made it into the article, I expanded on the list and published it on our own blog, www.inmedialog.com. That post has not only become one of the most-visited posts of all time on our blog, it has also been translated into Italian and posted on a PR blog in Italy. So I thought I’d also post it here so the readers and subscribers of DangleTech could also enjoy it…
Francis Moran
In the Media
Advertising is dead. Long live advertising
I had lunch last week with a new colleague with whom I am just beginning a collaboration. He strikes me as a highly creative guy, and he runs what, in this social-media age, might be called a traditional advertising agency. So when we began to talk about the impact that new social-media tools are having on our collective industry, I was interested to hear his perspective…
Francis Moran
In the Media
‘$24 is a slightly more annoying version of free’
At a time when mighty Facebook is said to be scrambling for debt financing to help pay for all the computers it needs to accommodate its explosive growth, the wisdom of not charging for the service you provide is coming sharply into question…
Francis Moran
In the Media
Exactly what are we stimulating here?
"For a stimulus to work today it has to stimulate the emerging creative economy, the engines of regional economic growth and higher incomes across Canada and the U.S."...
Francis Moran
In the Media
(Some) Journalists are dead and mindless sheep
As a reporter and editor for 10 years and then as a communicator for the past 20, I have always taken issue with the contention that journalists exhibit a pack mentality. Now, lest you think I’m about to come to the defence of the ink-stained hordes, let me hasten to add that I take issue because the term “pack” suggests aggression, determination, focus and coordination, attributes that are all-too-rarely exhibited in newsrooms. What I have seen would be better described as a herd mentality, whereby far too many journalists are dead and mindless sheep, blindly following each other around and bleating out the same stories…
Francis Moran
In the Media
How’s your customer service?
On our corporate blog and as an ongoing part of our work for a British client that provides a business-process-based customer relationship management, or CRM, package to multi-channel contact centres, we write a lot about how customer service should be more than a cost centre, more than an annoyance; that it should, in fact, be a deliberate and properly funded strategy through which you differentiate yourself from your competition. Is that how it is in your company?
Francis Moran
In the Media
The Ottawa inferiority complex theorem strikes again
In my 10 years of operating an Ottawa-headquartered public relations agency that focuses exclusively on clients in business-to-business technology sectors, I have far too often experienced a phenomenon I have come to call my " Ottawa inferiority complex theorem."
Francis Moran
In the Media
‘Canadian VCs are retarded’
That was just one of the more intemperate statements made earlier this week by Red Herring publisher and CEO Alex Vieux at his company’s Canada 08 conference at Mont Tremblant, Quebec. Vieux also slammed Canadians as “risk-averse,” told one VC he was lazy for having a lower pace of completed deals than the average Silicon Valley firm, and advised companies to avoid federal-government-owned BDC Venture Capital because one of its partners said he’d have to vet with a committee his inclination to invest in a company.
Francis Moran
In the Media
University of Waterloo incubator residence opens
A fascinating new experiment in encouraging technical entrepreneurship amongst university students gets officially launched tomorrow night at the University of Waterloo. A mash-up of student residence and business incubator, the university’s new VeloCity is billed as "a place where some of UW’s most talented, entrepreneurial, creative and technologically savvy students will be united under one roof to work on the future of mobile communications, web and new media."
Francis Moran
In the Media
Startup Camp Montreal 3 announces speakers, calls for entries
The Montréal start up community will gather at Société des arts technologiques November 27 for the third edition of Startup Camp Montreal, an event dedicated, as its website says, "to all things startup."