RIPPLE100 Micromarketing

Let’s face it. For most us brand isn’t something we storyboard, sub-committee, or sink millions into. It’s simply the sum of how people know and experience us. This is a story of how I did “brand” in the past week, as seen through people and organizations who were themselves doing “brand”.

As CEO of Ripple100 my job these days is to hold a mirror to you and show you the many different pieces of your business, nonprofit, or politics (or just you) that are worth marketing, that in the collective constitute your brand. Remarkably, I’ve found these pieces of you to be not just many, but in every case unlimited. Everyday, week, or month, there is always something new. Everyone of you possess unlimited points of contact, connection, resonance, engagement, intimacy, persuasion, loyalty. Each with more or less different audiences, some known, most not. But every single piece of you is a guaranteed point of conversion with someone else, be it a sale, an opt-in lead, a referral, or just someone who tucks that note to self that someday I or someone I know will need you.

In other words, your opportunities for micromarketing are endless (which is why we created Ripple100 software to help you do unlimited micromarketing campaigns, or ripples as we call them, one small piece of you at a time).

I chronicled below a week in my life holding these mirrors to different people. I spend most days with small business owners, solopreneurs, nonprofit managers, and occasionally because they need it too (but are a harder sell because of bureaucracy), I also meet with bigger organizations, including one below that has revenues bigger than Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Twitter combined. In every case, whoever you are, I’ve found the same to be true. You have unlimited opportunities for micromarketing, something to be gained or lost if you do or don’t, each little piece building your collective brand, but each also a potential point of conversion in your results funnel.

And so here are 8 snapshots of my life. In every one the central question has been: what are the many parts of you that you can ripple?

1. Monday 2pm Bru Café, New Haven CT. I don’t even drink coffee, but I have many meetings here. I like the place and people. Bru is like many indie cafes: local art on the wall, eclectic people in eclectic, cozy, haphazardly placed couches, good panninis, sinful deserts, and wireless internet. Any one of these is a potential ripple, as discussed many times with owners Curtis Packer and Bill Readey, who are serial entrepreneurs in fascinating businesses that have nothing to do with cafes (and so the owners themselves are potential ripples). Bill first got the ripple concept when Amy and I described it as a way of showcasing the outdoor concerts, poetry reading, and constant stream of events at Bru. Today I had a eureka ripple: mate (mah-tay). Mate is my regular drink at Bru, either in lemongrass or ginger. Why I loved it wasn’t quite clear until the day Barista Cris said they’d ran out, then proceeded to sing its praises: that mate was a fuller leaf than tea, overflowing with antioxidants, an appetite suppressant, and so on. Come to think of it I’d always felt a subtle numbing sensation after mate. I had my a-ha moment when I turned to google with the search terms: “mate, new haven, café” and found nothing. If it’s not in google, it’s not in New Haven. So that’s our first ripple: Nowhere Else in New Haven: a Mate A Day at Bru Cafe.

2. Tuesday 2pm The Sundance Café & Wine Bar, Stamford CT. I’m meeting with Jim Coleman, who just changed hats from CEO of The Alternative Board in Chelsea NYC (peer advisory boards for small business owners) – to consulting for, among others, political campaigns (2010 baby!). Last time I saw Jim was in a Scarsdale fundraiser for his own political run. So Jim asks, how can my clients ripple? I turned the question back to Jim: how many different sides of your candidate, of any political candidate, would be worth sharing if only there was a financially and operationally efficient way of doing it? And that’s when Jim had his a-ha moment. Family, bills and causes they’d advocated, career pre-politics, education, friends, pastimes – every one of them is a little piece that in the collective builds the brand, makes them less of a political piece of meat and more living breathing one of us. At the same time, the distinct parts represent unlimited points of conversion, be it for votes, donors, volunteers, general goodwill, etc.

3. Wednesday 6am, home in New Haven. I’m in a call with the COO of one of Asia’s most successful healthcare businesses, a privately held beauty with over 20 operating companies, all leaders in their respective markets. So we’re talking ourselves hoarse surveying all the little and big things they could ripple – they have product launches in several therapeutic and consumer healthcare categories, they’re awash in cash, growing in every Asian country except Japan and India, looking for M&A and licensing opportunities in the US, and so on like we weren’t in annus horribilis 2009. Then the best piece of all hit me. They could sustain all that growth because they took care of the most important thing: talent. Finding talent, organizing it, motivating it, keeping it. They had numerous accolades, from Baldridge to the Vatican to almost annual selections as employer of the year, and the singular distinction of having built so much employee goodwill that they have no union. I also knew it first hand because they recently hired my Yale roommate and lifelong New Yorker, who traded in his CFO post at an AMEX subsidiary to go build something. To me, the opportunity for a talent grab, among so many others, was an obvious ripple. How much talent did they want to grab here in the US, in the worst job market in living memory – that’s what we would ripple.

4. Wednesday 1pm Mont Samson office Hamden CT. Some stories you just fall in love with at first telling, and Travis L. Smith got me at hello. Travis started the Mont Samson Financial Group as a financial planning office catering to lower income professionals – his customer acquisition funnel started with people coming out of debt settlement; Travis helped them turn things around for good. His clientele has since expanded to include upper income brackets, but I could tell Travis had back-to-my-roots character and sense of mission driving him. “I grew up poor in New Haven, in bad neighborhoods, but unlike many of the kids around me, I always wanted something more”. Travis shared his story of growing up in a challenging environment, completing an accounting degree, and taking a corporate job that convinced him once and for all he was a man who would chart his own destiny – he was a born entrepreneur. We can ripple your story, Travis, as well as testimonials from your diverse clients, each one a ripple case study that would bring “financial planning” to life for many more prospects. Ripple even his Dwight Howard good looks as many people complemented him on it. In the end Travis himself came up with the idea to ripple Section XYZ I forget of some tax code that he thought was a well kept secret that he’d like many more prospects to know because he could help them leverage it. And so another ripple is born.

5. Thursday 2pm Yale Club of New York. I’m meeting with Clinton Blume III who heads the 100 Years Association of New York, a nonprofit whose membership consists of businesses and nonprofits at least 100 years old. (we have 99 more years to go). They’re having their biggest event of the year that night – a gala honoring a member celebrating 150 years in business. This is too easy, Clint. Every one of your members is a ripple – do one everyday and that alone might carry the weight of their annual fees. You could ripple your membership directory, which you make public anyway – and that would make for interesting reading that people would naturally share. But Clint wants to open new streams that build on 100 Years – he’s zeroed in on transitional and inter-generational issues of family businesses, wants to start a panel on that in early 2010. Sounds good, we’ll ripple that.

6. Still at the Yale Club, I’m sitting by one of the two fireplaces at the member’s lounge, thinking to myself: what an amazing place this Yale Club is – grill and tap rooms, rooftop dining, great food and guest chefs and wine tastings, all the cocktails and single malts a guy can want, squash, sauna, right by Grand Central (frankly my biggest utility as I can drop off in the baggage room while I run all over Manhattan). Yet with all that going for it, including the Yale pedigree (Dartmouth and UVA also share the club), the Yale Club had its own challenges – and micromarketing opportunities. I don’t know the average member’s age, but one can hazard upwards of 50 and not be far off. The Yale Club needs to replenish its ranks, recruit more alums 40 and below. I’m convinced, despite the no jeans, no laptops policy, The Yale Club has unlimited attractions it can offer to a younger audience. But: they’re less likely to buy into all things Yale Club (such as what you’d typically communicate in a website or brochure), and more likely to resonate and respond to little pieces of it. Perception is reality – that of the Yale Club’s was a stuffy place for old men. In micromarketing there was a chance to evolve the collective brand, one ripple at a time so you’re reaching out to new audiences without alienating the old reliables. It’s a scenario that would be replayed several days later in The Q Club New Haven, where Rick Taft of Business Transfer Alliance, hosted me. Same old world club, same problem of appealing to younger membership, same opportunity to micromarket little pieces at a time.

7. Thursday 5pm Community Restaurant in NYC. Chas Carner is hosting me, my first time in this Morningside heights gem, right on the southern skirts of Columbia. Its ripple opportunities, as with any good restaurant, are the definition of unlimited. The food, the chef, the staff, the ambience, the location, the history, and so on. Community’s niche was healthy culinary delights. I’m a retired foodie (a baby and a startup will do that you), so I might be out of touch here, but I thought it was a big deal to be able to pair organic pinot noir with I-forget-what-they-fed-it steak and duck, and to start it all off with matzo ball soup and cap it off, lord help me remember what that dessert was, after a few martinis and manhattans. And did I tell you, my bartender Jessica is a soprano with her next role as Tosca? Any number of things to ripple here, but as I dove into it with Chas, we unraveled many more, beginning with, as the name suggests the Community: the Crowd. Around here it’s a mix of Manhattan excursionists, gentrifying Harlem, and Ivy League intelligentsia. Ah, a ripple to savor.

8. Friday 5pm Bishop Street, New Haven. My last stop this week is the holiday party with Ripple100’s development team. What to ripple about this merry band? Let’s begin with head honcho Derek Koch – who has amazing good manners to go with his amazing resume: U of Chicago, Northwestern, a startup venture funded and exited, grandmaster of the Connecticut Technology Council’s New Haven cell who hatched interesting topics like Can Web 2.0 Outperform Ductape and WD-40. But very quickly that night as we were comparing musical preferences and happily reviewing the merits of Pauliner and Harpoon, it was obvious what we’d ripple: the team’s diversity. Wenbin from China, Padmini from India, and lone American Klayton was photoshopper by day, lead singer for a death metal band (whose name I can never remember) by night. Now that’s something to ripple, many different sides of one team, each a part of the collective brand, and insofar as they exude different personalities and backgrounds and languages and even musical tastes, every one is also, for potential clients looking for a point of resonance, a potential point of conversion.

So many things to ripple. Let’s toast to that.