A startup business faces many difficult challenges getting off the ground. For many early stage CEO’s assessing their priorities, product development and the seed money to grow are their primary concerns. Few if any are thinking much about the critical importance of brand building.

For startup CEOs, brand building needs to be as important to early business success as product development and raising money. You can have the most innovative, groundbreaking product ever conceived, but if you can’t create a strong foundation for communicating that value to investors and the marketplace, chances are the business venture won’t go far.

You don’t get a second chance to make a good first impression.

Everyone has heard that statement before. But for startup brands the statement holds even more significance. Whatever startup brands are doing, chances are they’re doing it for the first time. The first presentation to an investor, customer or important employee must be simple, clear and compelling — there are no second chances.

Developing a strong brand is critical to the early success of startups and emerging companies.

Over the course of this one-day workshop you’ll build a strategic foundation for marketing success in your early stage business through focus in four critical areas:

To whom you market
You can only create successful products or solutions when you know who the most fervent buyers will be. It’s critical to understand as much as you can about the core target customer segment to whom the brand is intended to appeal.

Why they buy
Grabbing the largest share of those customers’ wallets requires a complete understanding on what drives the target customer to products/brands in your space. Defining the context that will give the brand unquestioned relevance to the target customer against their illuminating needs, motivations, attitudes, and preferences is essential for brand building success.

What makes your brand highly valued and difficult to substitute
To drive purchase behavior, the brand needs to represent a compelling and highly emotional benefit to the target customer. This benefit must be relevant, differentiating and believable. How well you position your products/services will determine whether your brand will make it into the hearts and minds of those that matter most to your future and whether your brand will dominate their spending patterns.

How your brand competes
Your brand equity, or the health of your brand, is a culmination of every experience customers have with your brand. These associations, attitudes and perceptions determine whether the brand will build a following of loyal advocates who will be the first to try new products and extensions or not.

Who should attend?
The Brand Strategy Workshops for Startups and Emerging Companies are attended by early stage Founders, CEOs, and their teams and is typically held off-site, at a venue of your choosing. With no distractions, business teams will step away from the urgency of running their business and focus on the important strategic and creative decisions for creating bigger futures for their brand.

Drawing from decades of brand building expertise, we designed The Brand Strategy Workshop for Startups and Emerging Companies specifically to help early stage CEOs: a.) identify new opportunities in the marketplace b.) recalibrate their focus in raising venture capital c.) concentrate on creating bigger futures for their brand in a creative, collaborative and interactive setting.

The Brand Strategy Workshop for Startups and Emerging Companies is particularly useful for Founders and CEOs are engaged in the early planning stages of:

• seeking new rounds of venture funding

• naming their new enterprise

• introducing new products

• creating marketing and communication strategies

• planning to enter new markets or serve a new customer segment

• planning to shift brand messaging and communication strategies

At the conclusion of the workshop, The Blake Project will prepare a comprehensive executive summary documenting all strategic decisions and hypothesis that will serve as a pathway toward implementing marketing and communications programs to create a bigger future for your brand.

Workshop Executive Summary Report
The executive summary will serve as a basis for developing actionable creative briefs guiding the brand team’s marketing communications partners and future marketing initiatives.

The Report will include detailed descriptions of following workshop content:

• Brand Positioning Criteria

• The Brand Mission and Vision

• The Frame of Reference

• Target Customer Segment Description

• Target Customer Benefit Hierarchy

• Behavioral Drivers / What Target Customers Value Most

• Brand Positioning Framework

• Final Brand Positioning Statement, Brand Essence, Brand Promise

• Desired Target Customer Associations with the Brand

• The Brand Essence

• Strategic Imperatives and Next Steps

The Brand Strategy Workshop for Startups and Emerging Companies has been validated by Founders, Entrepreneurs and CEOs in dozens of business categories for its ability to align and energize the organization and its management team with a strong foundation for business success.

This work will greatly impact the success of your startup brand for years to come.

Please email me for more about how this workshop can benefit your brand.

I found out that I could apply for about 70 jobs a day before my eyes glazed over completely. I also found out that I could do this for 17 days in a row before I really needed a day off.

That’s almost 1,200 jobs.

Guess what? I didn’t get a response to a single one of those jobs. Not one. Basically, they gave me every bit as much attention as I gave them.

Most people do something similar when they look for work online. Eventually, your mind numbs and it becomes impossible to tell what you’re applying for. Your judgment starts to falter and pretty soon, you’re slamming out resumes as fast as you can.

Part of the problem is that job descriptions are painfully awful to read. Part of the problem is that it seems like doing a lot of stuff and staying busy is how you get a job. Part of the problem is that everyone else feels that way and as a result, lots of companies are buried in resumes that are only sort of applicable to the job.

The people on the other end of the chain have the same problem. They look at the stack of applicants and try to sift to the ones that fit. Their eyes glaze over and they slip as they reject. Pretty soon, they are only looking for perfect fits (which guarantees that the person won’t last in the job).

So what do you do?

It may be the case that you need to do some busy work. So, by all means, apply for 10 or 20 jobs a day. Just don’t pay much attention to them.

With the other eight hours in your job hunting work day, focus on one company. Learn about it, figure out what you’d like to do there and go to work on building a network that gets you access to the people who’d hire you.

What you’re really looking for is an interview. It doesn’t really matter how you get it. Remember, all job hunting is about getting the interview.

Why You’ll Never Get A Job By Searching For One is a post from: Glassdoor Blog

Related posts:

1. What You Really Need To Know About Social Media Profiles And Job Searching
2. 4 Tips For Job Searching Long-Distance
3. Are There New Rules To Job Searching?

Today on Branding Strategy Insider, another question from the BSI Emailbag. Gabriella, an instructor of marketing and branding in New York, New York writes: 

“I am an instructor of marketing and branding at the Art Institute of New York City. We are revising our curriculum for our fashion merchandising department courses. We are considering some of our students’ comments that they’ d like to take the branding course first before the marketing course. Some instructors like myself feel that learning marketing comes first, then they can study branding, PR, etc. Other instructors seem to think that that is the traditional approach and that today, branding has become its own entity, and functions separately from marketing. Perhaps they are confusing corporate branding with product branding that can go on at the same time? Would you kindly clarify so we can better tweak our curriculum if necessary.”

Gabriella, that is a very interesting question. Historically, brand management was taught as one element of marketing. I have told people that if marketing and brand management were two sets, they would largely overlap but each would include some things that were not in the other’s set. As one who sees things through a brand management lens, I like to look at marketing as just one piece (a very important one, albeit) of brand management versus the other way around. In brand management, one starts with customer and competitive research to not only understand customer wants and needs, but more importantly to understand customer values and customer emotional responses to various value propositions.

This is done in the context of competitive offerings. From that information, one positions the brand, creating its essence, promise (unique value proposition), archetype and personality. This then leads to the creation of the brand’s identity (name, logo, tagline, type fonts, colors and other identity elements) and its marketing messages and campaigns. It also leads to the brand’s “elevator speech,” which is embraced and internalized by its employees. And, it can lead to customer touch point design, including product design. The brand positioning may also dictate, or at least imply, a pricing strategy and a distribution strategy. So, mostly everything can be driven off of the brand concept and positioning. By the way, the most successful contemporary brands tend to stand for something important to their target customers, making them admirable to those customers, who then want to use or wear those brands as badges to express who they are and what they believe in (or who they would like to be perceived as being). So, allot of this involves consumer psychology and deep customer insight and the marketing research necessary to gain that insight.

So I tend to think about brand strategy as the high level marketing strategy that drives everything else in marketing, but again, I have lived and breathed branding for the past 27 years so this would be my bias. Certainly, marketing components and tactics still need to be taught, everything from product design, package design, pricing, distribution, advertising campaign development, media planning, sales promotion, direct marketing and social network marketing to public relations, trade marketing, customer relationship management (CRM), marketing research, retail merchandising, guerilla marketing, publicity stunts, loyalty programs, website design, search engine optimization (SEO), marketing plan development and more. These are the nuts & bolts of marketing as I see it, or to use another handyman analogy, the set of tools one needs to be considered a true marketer.

So teaching marketing and brand management are both very important. I view one (brand management) as more strategic and the other (marketing) as more tactical, but others might disagree with me. So, does one teach the “nuts & bolts” first or the big picture design first? I could make an argument either way, however my gut tells me that students will become more energized when they understand the branding concept first. However, they then need to learn the “nuts & bolts” of how to actually execute marketing in support of the brand’s promise. As someone once said, “the devil is in the details.” If they don’t understand marketing mechanics, they will never become exceptional brand strategists. 

Thanks for your question Gabriella. Do you have a question related to branding? Just Ask…

Sponsored By: The Brand Positioning Workshop

In Chapter 3, “Partnering with Human Resources,” Lavelle takes a page from the playbook of John “Jack” Welch, who was the Chairman and CEO of General Electric from 1981 to 2001. Lavelle notes that under Welch, GE was always searching for more effective ways to evaluate the organization, because he (Welch) understood the importance of legitimate feedback on employee and corporate growth.

Are You Making Yourself Vital In Your Company?

Welch’s “vitality curve” was a tool he used to separate the staff, top to bottom, into three unique groups: Group “A” were the top 20%, and they were rewarded with stock options, promotions and bonuses. Group “B” were the middle 70% of the “vitality curve.” This group didn’t deliver the most brilliant or inspired performances, but Welch considered them vital since they were the majority and were typically steady and reliable.

The bottom 10% made up Group “C.” According to Lavelle, “Welch believed these low-producing team members were more likely to enervate than energize, and GE regularly and efficiently counseled out anyone that fell into this class.” Some accused Welch of cruelty here, but he believed his approach was in the employee’s best interest. He reasoned that they would be better off finding a field that would more aptly suit their skills, abilities and interests.

Why You Should Care

You may be asking yourself what this has to do with you and your career. After all, no such policies or grouping are in place where you work. So why should you care?

What you should realize is this: There is not a company of any size on this planet that does not use this exact system in some form or another. They may have different names for it, or they may not refer to it at all. But they do use it.

If you’re not sure which group you fall into, it may be time for a little self-evaluation. If you discover that your performance level makes you a “C” player, don’t fret.

How to Boost Your Vitality

Following are five steps you can take right now to get into the “B” club, and possibly even Club A!

1) Speak to a supervisor before it’s too late. Letting someone know that you are aware that your performance may be less than stellar is a great first step in elevating yourself off of the chopping block. Your supervisor has a vested interest in keeping the staff together, and they are rarely interested in having to go through the effort required to fire you and hire someone else.

2) Follow Lavelle’s advice by creating a 90-day plan for yourself, than share that plan with your boss. Now, make a new first impression by meeting or exceeding all of the objectives on your plan.

3) Zero in on the parts of your job that inspire you. Then, make yourself the go-to person for that particular chore. If there isn’t anything that inspires you, be willing to do whatever it is everyone else seems to avoid and do it with a confident attitude.

4) Showing up early and staying late is an easy one. The problem is some people actually believe that no one notices just because they have given up on urging compliance by them. Believe it. They know, and they notice, and it may be all the ammunition they need when the time comes to cull the herd.

5) Associating with members of the “A” and “B” group is a great way to learn by observing. Emulating the actions of those you aspire to be like will almost always lead to greater success.

Like the man who has noticed his pants are fitting a little too tight, owning the problem is the surest way to agree to the solution.

How To Become An ‘A’ Employee When You Feel Like A ‘C’ Employee is a post from: Glassdoor Blog

Related posts:

1. Communicating Your Way To Higher Employee Engagement

Thievery

There’s a reason stealing is against the law and while stealing a co-worker’s credit won’t land you in jail, it certainly won’t win you any fans among your peers.  “Taking credit for someone else’s work is pretty common and is not as overt as you may think,” says Joel Garfinkle, author of Getting Ahead: Three Steps to Take Your Career To The Next Level.  Whether it’s taking over a project near completion or claiming credit during a meeting, ultimately it leads to employees not trusting the perpetrator. According to Garfinkle, the motivation for stealing credit varies from political maneuvering to making a power play, but either way it turns co-workers off and creates an atmosphere that is less collaborative and less trusting. “It has more of an impact in a small setting because there are less people,” says Garfinkle, noting that in a small company the perception that someone isn’t trustworthy is apt to spread a lot quicker than in a large company.

Office Infidelity

Office romances are inevitable since we spend most of our days at work, but it’s a huge ‘no no’ when two married workers are carrying on an office affair. “Either in a corporate setting or smaller office, having an affair is bad and wrong,” says Garfinkle.  Regardless of the moral implications, that affair could at best throw your judgment into question and at worst get you fired. People are apt to treat you differently if they know about the affair not to mention gossip about you behind your back.  “If you are having an affair with someone at work, people will judge and have a reaction to you based on your value system,” says Garfinkle. If cooling your heels is out of the question, he says to be as discreet as possible. “You want people to see you for your work not your sexual exploits,” says Garfinkle.

Constant Complaining & Negativity

Nobody likes a Debbie Downer nor do they want to hear continuous complaints about pretty much everything during the work day.  “It can be hugely destructive to your personal career and the company,” says Jeanne Yocum, founder of the blog Succeeding in Small Business, of complaining and negativity.  While the complaints may be justified and the negativity warranted, a bad attitude at work will not only annoy co-workers but could ultimately get you fired. According to Yocrum, a boss will likely try to get to the root cause of the bad behavior, but if it’s simply a personality trait, especially in a small office setting, your days are probably numbered.  “You have to realize what you’re doing to the organization and the morale of other people around you,” says Yocum. Bosses can’t let it go on, she says.

Gossiping

Gossiping is a fact of life in many office settings, but if you are the person doing the gossiping it will not only undermine your credibility, but it will create negativity with the people you work with. “What happens is it gets back to the person (you’ve been gossiping about) and undermines the relationship with that person,” says Yocum. That’s fine if it’s not someone you work with on a daily basis, but if it’s one of your team members, it could hurt job performance and thus put your job at risk. In a small office setting, the gossiping will likely spread quicker than in a big company, as will the harsh judgment of the gossiper.  “If you are viewed as someone that’s a gossiper, co-workers will be less open with you and more skeptical about whatever you say,” says Yocum. “You’ll create a reputation that you’re not trustworthy and you don’t have credibility.”

Passing the Buck

Nothing can be more annoying than a co-worker that won’t own up to mistakes or take his or her share of the blame if something goes wrong. Chances are that person is quick to take credit, but when the going gets tough he or she points a finger. “It’s really bad to blame others and not take responsibility,” says Garfinkle. “People you’re blaming know the truth about the situation.” While throwing your co-workers under the bus may make you look good, keep doing it and it will not only undermine your relationships with your office mates, but eventually the boss will catch on. “A person’s reputation and credibility is really important in an organization,” says Garfinkle.

5 Bad Behaviors To Avoid In A Small Office is a post from: Glassdoor Blog

Related posts:

1. Avoid Career-Damaging Mistakes At Your Office Holiday Party
2. What’s Worse Than Office Gossip?
3. Survey: Office Workers Want More Telecommuting, Flexible Schedules

Show me the Money! This memorable line from the 1996 movie Jerry Maguire might just as well be coming from today’s CEO’s and CFO’s: a growing and vocal demand for accountability from the Marketing function.

Big Data Coming – For Better or Worse

Everywhere you go these days, you hear about “big data:” the coming golden age where all problems will be solved by crunching massive amounts of data from the web and every other imaginable source. You would think that the CMO’s ability to, indeed, show them the money, would never be better.

But according to a recent IBM study, “From Stretched to Strengthening,” there is still a yawning gulf between the accountability demands of the CFO and their CMO’s ability to answer them–even with big data. IBM interviewed over 1,700 CMO’s, across 19 industries and 64 countries. CMO’s said that the data explosion, far from being a solution, is one of the top four challenges they face. What was once seen as golden opportunity is becoming a huge problem as the data explosion overwhelms Marketing organizations.

Big Data = Better ROI Measurement

But here’s the paradox. In the same study, almost half of the CMO’s believe that they are insufficiently prepared to provide hard return on marketing investment numbers on their key Marketing programs. Let me say that again: CMO’s are being overwhelmed with data, yet can’t adequately measure the ROI for their Marketing programs. How can that be?

Three Forces Transforming Advertising

Let’s take traditional advertising. It’s being transformed by three major forces: fragmentation, digitization, and social media. These forces are driving increases in data that are making it increasingly challenging to understand what works, what doesn’t and how ROI differs across initiatives.

For example, it used to be enough to measure the effectiveness of an ad in copy testing and “know” whether you had effective advertising or not. But in today’s world, the same ad will perform differently when delivered in linear TV vs. On-Line video vs. tablets vs. mobile. And, social media will impact the effectiveness of the ad and vice versa. Not to mention the interactive effects of these platforms or the fact that within a medium, ad performance will differ across TV programs, genres, web sites, time of day, pod position and more.

A Simple Framework for Assessing Advertising Effectiveness

What’s a CMO to do? Simplifying this data explosion into several simple concepts can provide insight and opportunities for CMO’s to not just measure the ROI of their advertising, but to optimize it. Here are three simple concepts to help you assess advertising effectiveness.

Reach – The first job of any advertising campaign is to reach the right audience. How well is your brand doing at this? It’s amazing to me how few CMO’s have any real systems in place to understand how efficiently their advertising is hitting their target—particularly in digital.

It’s now possible to measure reach, frequency and GRP’s against a demographic target on-line just as you would in TV — on a daily basis. Early learnings show that advertisers could be saving 10-20% by simply optimizing reach against their target across sites – e.g. moving money out of weak sites and into strong ones.

Resonance – Having reached the right audience, the next job of advertising is to get noticed. Breaking thru is the most important job of advertising, because if it doesn’t, nothing else matters anyway. But beyond breakthrough, advertising must communicate your brand and change how consumers feel about it. How well is your brand doing this — right now ?

The real news in the resonance space is the measurement all of this in near real time. CMO’s can use these in-flight insights to improve performance in market — and not wait till the next cycle. Optimizing creative unit rotation, media weight, programming, placement and cross-platform exposure are all opportunities in the new world of optimization “on the fly.”

Reaction – Advertising exists to drive behavioral change. Usually this means increasing sales, but it can also mean getting consumers to search for your brand, go to your Facebook fan page, talk positively about your brand, etc. Measuring reaction is key to understanding if your advertising is going the final mile to cause behaviors that result in a positive ROI.

Panels which track (with consumers consent) both TV viewing and Web surfing behavior enable Marketers to measure advertising’s impact on search, etc. Market Mix Modeling and Single Source measurement (measuring what consumers watch & buy at the household level) measure sales lift and ROI by media platform, and help answer the ever present questions of how much to spend and how to allocate across which platforms.

These three concepts — reach, resonance, and reaction, provide CMO’s a simple framework for measuring advertising effectiveness and how they can optimize their advertising and media plans. 

Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by: Randall Beard

Sponsored By: Brand Aid 

For most May graduates, not only have you landed a job, but your start date isn’t until the fall, leaving you with the entire summer off. Many of you probably have a summer planned of pool-side relaxation, maybe a vacation planned here or there and weekend trips to visit friends marked on your calendars. 

Without a doubt you should be celebrating your last free summer, but remember – your competition is still at work.

If all you bring to the table on your first day is a beautiful, bronzed tan, you may be kicked to the curb before you know it. Here are a few ways to stay sharp this summer:

1. Fine-tune yourself

Now is the perfect time to shape your personal brand. Just because you secured a job does not mean it is time to throw your resume and portfolio out of the window. Perfect all of your materials and be sure they are flawless and up-to-date. Believe me, you WILL need these again. Your personal brand takes constant work to maintain, but view it as the definition of yourself in a dictionary of thousands of employees. Try starting up your own blog, perhaps, or become more of an influence on your social media by sharing useful and knowledgeable information.

2. Clean it up

To be blunt – your college days are over. Pictures of you doing a keg stand at a frat party for the public to view are no longer acceptable (even though they never really were). This is not to say you have to throw out all of your precious college memories, it just means to take them off of your social media platforms. If you want respect at your new job, you have to earn it. You have worked hard to acquire your new position, it would be quite embarrassing to lose it over a snap-shot of you funneling a beer.

3. Dive into your industry

Get ahead this summer by keeping up with all of the trends in your industry. Google Reader, for example, is a great way to follow relevant articles and posts pertaining to your field. Pick and choose some of the most prominent sources to subscribe to and browse through them each day. The convenience of having all your news in one place makes it an easy one-stop-shop for diving into your industry.

 4. Hi, hello, how are you?

The networking never ends. For those of you working in a new city in the fall, get your foot in the door early. Become familiar with your surroundings and know the area in which you will be living in. It is important to talk to as many people as you can. Also, use your free time over the summer to keep in touch with all of your past employers and connections. You never know when you will need to reach out to them.

5. Solidify your routine

Rather than waiting for the first day to get your life on track, begin your good habits early. A lot of times, we use our first day on the job to be the leading factor in changing our lifestyles for the better. If you are looking forward to getting a full eight hours of sleep during the night, then accustom your body to do so prior to your first day of work. If you want to exercise three days a week after work in the fall, begin working out during that time period this summer – the proactive change will pay off now and in the fall.

Twelve weeks can fly by before you know it so begin prioritizing to make your summer a productive one. By getting ahead during these summer months, you will be an A-player coming in to your first day on the job.

How else can you stay on top this summer? What are some skills to perfect before the first day? Let us know your thoughts below.

Staying Sharp This Summer Before Your First Day At Work is a post from: Glassdoor Blog

Related posts:

1. How To Find & Land A Summer Internship At The Last Minute
2. College Students Face Summer Job Gap: Unconventional Tips To Landing A Summer Pay Check
3. Keep The Heat On Your Career Or Job Search This Summer

“The constant changes in the organization structure and leadership team were a distraction and drain. Just when you would gain some momentum, you would reset. One step backward to only take one step forward.”

Ross Levinsohn has been appointed Interim CEO at Yahoo, as the company’s Board of Directors once again head back to the drawing board to determine who will fill the position permanently. Whoever it is will have a tough road ahead as employees have shown to have little faith in how the past few top executives have led the company.

In Thompson’s few months on the job, he held a 48% approval rating among employees, while his predecessor Carol Bartz holds the highest cumulative CEO rating among Yahoo CEOs of late, with her 54% approval. Interim CEO Timothy Morse received 42% approval, and Yahoo co-founder and former CEO Jerry Yang held 43% approval.¹ For perspective, the average CEO rating on Glassdoor is 62% approval.

Glassdoor, a social jobs and career community, takes a deeper look into Yahoo’s CEO and company ratings over the past four years to see how employee sentiment at this tech giant has changed by quarter.

Yahoo CEOs Have Lost Traction Over Time

As Yahoo CEO tenure increases, it seems that approval among employees falls. Jerry Yang held an 81% approval in Q1 2008, but left the company with a 24% approval, just three quarters later. When Carol Bartz took over, she started with a 91% approval, before plummeting to 33% approval in Q3 2011. And while it was still too soon to tell, Scott Thompson began his tenure with 85% approval before it fell to a 31% approval as of yesterday.

Employee Morale Stays Fairly Steady

But despite all the changes at the top of Yahoo’s corporate ladder, employee morale remains fairly steady holding at a 3.4 (OK) rating over the past 18 quarters.²

In addition, when we look at Yahoo’s overall company rating quarter by quarter, it’s interesting to note it has not increased or decreased significantly, receiving a high of 4.3 (Very Satisfied) during Q1 2008, to a low of 2.7 (OK) during Q2 2009. For the most part, when asked about how satisfied employees are overall with their jobs and the company, most employees give the company a 3.1 (OK) rating. Interestingly, this falls right in line with most companies reviewed; out of the more than 160,000 companies reviewed on Glassdoor, the average overall company rating is 3.1.

Recent Yahoo Employee Commentary

So what have Yahoo employees had to say about the company during the days leading to Scott Thompson’s departure? Below are just some of the best reasons to work at Yahoo as of late (the pros) and some of the biggest downsides (the cons) according to employees:

“[Pros] Generally very interesting projects. [Cons] Upper management chaos, contestant bad press.” – Yahoo Employee (location n/a)

“[Pros] Yahoo encourages and fosters new ideas and technologies and rewards employees for creating new stuff. Many great peers to work with. [Cons] Many not so great people to work with. There is a little too much politics in the company. There is a sort of identity crisis for the company – trying to reclaim former glory.” – Yahoo Employee (Sunnyvale, CA)

“[Pros] Great support from colleagues. Technically sound people; so a lot to learn. [Cons] Too much panic situation in upper management. Insecurity in the mind of employees because of frequent lay-offs. Too many stupid decisions taken in too less time and going nowhere even after doing that.” – Yahoo Software QA Engineer (Sunnyvale, CA)

“[Pros] Great people. Great mentorship. Great growth. [Cons] Lesser pay compared to peers in industry. No definite direction. Weak management.” – Yahoo Software Engineer (Bangalore, India)

“[Pros] Opportunity to develop new products in a large scale. [Cons] Classic ‘ivory tower’ behavior by senior management. Senior management believes they know it all and do not seek opinions and advice of their people on the ground. Lacks discipline across the org.” – Yahoo Senior Product Manager (Sunnyvale, CA)

Do you work at Yahoo? Share a company review and tell us about your experience and what advice you would give to senior management.

¹ CEO cumulative ratings based on approved company reviews collected since early 2008. Thompson received 42 company ratings, Bartz received 278 ratings, Morse received 19 ratings and Yang received 178 ratings.

² Company and workplace factor ratings based on a 5-point scale; 1.0=very dissatisfied, 3.0=OK, 5.0=very satisfied.

Yahoo Interim CEO & Senior Leaders Face Uphill Battle In Gaining Employee Trust is a post from: Glassdoor Blog

Related posts:

1. Inside Yahoo: Employees Sound Off In Post-Bartz Era
2. Yahoo CEO Bartz Leaves With 33% Approval Among Employees
3. Yahoo CEO Gives Herself ‘B-’; 54% Of Employees Approve Of Bartz

The brain remembers the emotional components of an experience better than any other aspect.

—John Medina

When Steve Jobs passed away on October 5, 2011, the world didn’t just lose one of its great visionaries, but it also lost an astonishing corporate storyteller. His presentations, “Steve-notes” as they were fondly called, had all the elements of a Broadway production, including a cast, drama, heroes, villains, and props. Most brand marketers use presentations to deliver information, often dryly. Steve Jobs gave presentations that informed, educated, and entertained.

The most memorable parts of Jobs’s presentations were what I call wow moments. These wow moments were carefully scripted and exhaustively rehearsed. It took an estimated 450 hours of work and rehearsals to create and deliver the twenty-minute presentation to introduce the Lion operating system in June 2011. Jobs was fanatical about each and every element of the presentation from the lighting to the messages. He knew the content of every slide, every font, and every color that was used on every slide. But nothing was more important in a presentation than the moment when the audience would gasp and say to themselves, I need that!

The Brain Does Not Pay Attention to Boring Things

No matter how sensational you think your product is, nobody is going to care if the message you’re using to communicate the product’s benefits is dry, confusing, and convoluted. Neuroscientist John Medina taught me that the brain does not pay attention to boring things. It is simply not programmed to grasp abstract concepts.

Instead he recommends creating an emotionally charged event, which is the equivalent of a mental Post-it Note for the brain. Medina says the brain’s amygdala is chockful of the neurotransmitter dopamine. So when the brain detects an  emotionally charged event  (e.g., joy, fear, surprise), the amygdala releases dopamine into the  system  that  greatly  aids  memory and  information  processing. Let’s recall three of Jobs’s emotionally charged events:

1984: The Ad and the Launch

When it came time to launch the Macintosh, the machine that revolutionized personal computers, Jobs wanted a television spot that would put a stamp on people’s minds. The ad agency Chiat/Day developed the famous Big-Brother-themed “1984″ ad, which ran only once during Super Bowl XVIII. More than 90 million people saw the ad, and it became the most admired television ad for the next two decades. Amazingly, the ad was nearly scrapped. When Jobs previewed the ad for the Apple board in December 1983, they hated it. Apple CEO John Sculley admitted he got cold feet. Jobs eventually won the argument, of course, but the story reminds us that Jobs intuitively understood the power of emotion in building a brand.

The 1984 television ad wasn’t the only wow moment Jobs had up his sleeve. In what is still considered one of the most dramatic reveals of any product in history, Jobs introduced the Macintosh with a magician’s flourish. On January 24, 1984, the Macintosh became the first computer to introduce itself.  After building the audience’s anticipation with a deftly crafted speech with IBM playing the narrative’s antagonist, Jobs whipped the audience into a frenzy of excitement. He then walked to the center of the stage where the Macintosh had been sitting in a cloth bag on a small table. Jobs pulled out the computer, attached the keyboard and mouse, and put in a floppy disk. The theme from Chariots of Fire began to play, and the words MACINTOSH INSANELY GREAT scrolled on the screen. The graphics were unlike anything anyone had ever seen on a computer. Jobs smiled, turned to the audience, and said,  “We’ve done a lot of talking about Macintosh, but today, for the first time, I’d like to let Macintosh speak for itself.” The audience gasped and cheered as they heard the computer say, Hello, I’m Macintosh. It sure is great to get out of that bag. Without the benefit of PowerPoint or Apple Keynote  (both of which had yet to be invented), Jobs gave one of the most awe-inspiring product launches in history.

2001: 1,000 Songs in Your Pocket

The iPod began Apple’s transformation from a computer company into a brand that   would make devices to change the way we live, work, and play. On October 23, 2001, Jobs unveiled the iPod- a music player that came with 5 GB of storage, not a revolutionary advance in technology. But Jobs had a wow moment in his pocket, literally. He said 5 GB of storage was enough to carry 1,000 songs. Oh, and there was one more thing…1,000 songs fit in your pocket.  The size of the iPod – along with its ease of use – made it different. “I just happen to have one right here in my pocket,” said Jobs as he pulled an iPod from the front pocket of his signature blue Jeans.

Apple Revolutionizes the Phone

On January 9, 2007, Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone and gave what I consider his greatest presentation. As he did twenty years earlier in the Macintosh presentation, he began by  building the anticipation. “Every once in a while a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything,” he said. He reminded his audience that Apple had introduced the Macintosh, which revolutionized the computer industry, and the iPod that revolutionized the music industry. “Today we’re launching three revolutionary products of this class,” Jobs added. “The first one is a widescreen iPod with touch controls. The second is a revolutionary mobile phone. And the third is a breakthrough Internet communications device.” Jobs slowly repeated each of the devices once, a second time, and a third. Finally he concluded, “Are you getting it? These are not three separate devices. This is one device, and we are calling it, iPhone!”

Steve Jobs knew how to turn a presentation into an awe inspiring and memorable event. He was the consummate salesman, and his techniques work just as well on the sales floor as they did on the presentation stage.

Excerpted from The Apple Experience: Secrets to Building Insanley Great Customer Loyalty – Carmine Gallo (c) 2012 by McGraw-Hill  

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