Marketing guru Jeph Maystruck, and his message that the business that succeeds in the future is the business that cares, kicked off the events of Small Business Week in the Battlefords Monday.
Maystruck was the guest speaker at a luncheon hosted at the Dekker Centre by the Battlefords Chamber of Commerce as part of activities leading into the Battlefords' Best Marketplace and Expo happening Oct. 24-26.
His presentation dealt with technology and social media platforms and their impact on consumers, but made the point that for businesses to succeed in this new and highly-competitive environment they have to show they care.
Consumers will want to "help the company that cares, the company that actually has a heart that believes in community or does something to make our world better," Maystruck said.
"If you don't figure out a way to make the world better with your strategy, you'll never get people to buy in," Maystruck said.
The title of his presentation was "Outcare the competition: How to compete in the business world of tomorrow."
Maystruck called the title "a comment on social media underserving what it was traditionally meant for and that was to help people," in speaking to the Regional Optimist.
He called "outcaring the competition" a "customer service focused strategy, an open-door management system."
His suggestion to businesses is they "either partner with a community-based organization or help the world out in some fashion. If they don't have a community page on their website and don't help the world out in some capacity, there's no way they're going to compete in the future in my opinion."
But Maystruck also noted in his presentation it would not be easy.
He told the luncheon audience, "doing the same old - the easy stuff what you did last year - that's not going to get you anywhere." He urged businesses to consider doing "something new, something different, something wild."
Maystruck pointed to a number of examples. One of them was the wildly successful ALS Ice Bucket Challenge that raised over a $100 million this year.
The Ice Bucket Challenge took a lot of heat at the time, he noted, and was dismissed as a "bad idea."
"The Ice Bucket Challenge was a terrible idea," said Maystruck. "But you're going to find that the good ideas … they're average. We don't talk about average, we don't share average, what we want is the incredible, the wild."
He also shared the example of a hilarious advertising campaign in Egypt for Panda Cheese.
In those commercials, someone would be shown turning down or rejecting Panda Cheese. At that moment, a life-size panda suddenly appears and starts destroying things, whether in a grocery aisle, an office, a hospital room or elsewhere.
Playing in the background of the ad is Buddy Holly's True Love Ways. The commercials end with a closing tag line of "never say no to Panda."
Maystruck noted Panda Cheese sales went through the roof in response to the ads. He cited the commercial for tapping into "that moment when you're about to buy something and make that purchasing decision."
"So if you're about to go buy something or make a purchasing decision, if your commercial could come up and that stupid song comes on, you're getting Panda Cheese!" Maystruck said.
In speaking to the Regional Optimist about that campaign, he called it a good example of creating a video based on something people could be doing that could "create a trigger in their head" about that product, so people will think of the product when they walk down the aisle at the store.
"Whereas, a ludicrous video that's completely wild but has nothing to do with your product or purchasing pattern, it's probably going to fail."
He had a word of advice for businesses looking to get in tune with the digital world in their approach. He urged them to not be afraid to work with people who are.
"Say yes, try something, do something." He did caution a recipe for failure was to "try everything. Don't do Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube all at once, it's not going to work. Do one, one thing at a time. Own it."
