Jon Lowder

Winston-Salem Chamber of Commerce Insults Our Intelligence

On the front page of today's Winston-Salem Journal there's an article titled "Groups Lobby City for Break"
and the thrust of the article is that the Chamber and the local realtors and developers are asking the city for a moratorium on new development regulations.  From the article:

Winston-Salem should impose a moratorium on any new business regulations, including a proposed tree ordinance, because of current economic conditions, say the Greater Winston-Salem Chamber of Commerce, real-estate agents and homebuilders.

The chamber's request, sent to the city last month, says that Winston-Salem has enacted too many ordinances in recent years that add to the cost of doing business. The letter specifically mentions ordinances that affect sidewalk and street standards, storm-water regulations, sign regulations and even an ordinance that requires business owners to remove graffiti.

Okay, I understand that the Chamber's job is to advocate for businesses in the city so I don't begrudge it the position it's taking.  It's a later paragraph that they use to help justify their position that just blew my mind:

The number of zoning cases coming before the planning board is down about 50 percent from last year, a measure that the chamber says is evidence, in part, of "the difficulty doing business here."

What?  The Chamber wants us to believe that adding sidewalks and other such regs are going to keep developers from building?  I have to call "BS" here, because developers build anytime they think there will be a buyer.  You could require them to plant 100 pink ceramic elephants on every acre and they'd do it if they thought they'd have a buyer.  No, I'm thinking that perhaps our country's epic housing decline and credit crisis might have just a little to do with the decrease in zoning cases.  Heck, Paul Norby, the director of the City County Planning Board, says exactly that in the article.

Like I said, I have no problem with the Chamber doing what they think is in the best interest of their members, but they should at least assume that the good citizens of Winston-Salem aren't all a bunch of dumbasses and refrain from condescending arguments such as this.  And if nothing else they should realize that it makes them look like they're the realtors' and developers' lap dogs, which they may very well be. 

BTW, I joined the Chamber last year and unfortunately I've only been able to make an event or two due to the fact that all the events seem to conflict with other obligations.  They did a wonderful job of outreach to me when I joined and it's through no fault of theirs that I haven't been able to do more with them.  I'm hoping to get more involved over the next couple of months.  On the other hand, I often find myself disagreeing with their public policy initiatives so I'm thinking they may not like having me around if I start piping up on the issues and letting them know what I think about many of their government affairs positions.  I don't think that will win me the Dale Carnegie "How to Win Friends and Influence People" prize.

Guaranty This

Now is not the time to be in the guaranty business, especially here in the NC Piedmont.  First, Triad Guaranty said they were throwing in the towel and more recently posted a nasty loss for the second quarter, and now AIG's underwriter United Guaranty has declared a $564 million underwriting loss for the 2nd quarter of this year.  United also said that 4.9% of policies were over 60 days past due.

Oy.

PaidContent Bought

Back in early 2002 I was working for a b-to-b publisher in Washington, DC and was very tired of the commute in and out of the city.  I decided to go out on my own as a consultant and my first client was MarketingSherpa, which had been launched by Anne Holland not too long before that.  At the same time PaidContent.org was launched by Rafat Ali and since they were in similar businesses the two companies bumped into each other on occasion.

PaidContent was more of a "newsy" operation while MarketingSherpa was more of a "how-to" for marketers.  I haven't talked to Anne in years, but by outward appearances MarketingSherpa is doing very well and I think she's built a sustainable business based on email newsletters that are free (content is put behind a firewall after a couple of weeks, so it must be purchased if you want to see it after that), and then selling premium content like reports and events to the large base of free subscribers.  From what I can tell PaidContent went more in the direction of ad sales as a revenue stream, although they also sell ads and host events, and they too seem to be doing very well.  So well, in fact, that PaidContent is being purchased by the Guardian Media Group out of the UK.

Nice to see all the hard work has paid off for Ali and his crew, and I'm also glad to see Anne continuing to do so well.  They also have shown that there's more than one way to skin a cat in the online media world.

Back in early 2002 I was working for a b-to-b publisher in Washington, DC and was very tired of the commute in and out of the city.  I decided to go out on my own as a consultant and my first client was MarketingSherpa, which had been launched by Anne Holland not too long before that.  At the same time PaidContent.org was launched by Rafat Ali and since they were in similar businesses the two companies bumped into each other on occasion.

PaidContent was more of a "newsy" operation while MarketingSherpa was more of a "how-to" for marketers.  I haven't talked to Anne in years, but by outward appearances MarketingSherpa is doing very well and I think she's built a sustainable business based on email newsletters that are free (content is put behind a firewall after a couple of weeks, so it must be purchased if you want to see it after that), and then selling premium content like reports and events to the large base of free subscribers.  From what I can tell PaidContent went more in the direction of ad sales as a revenue stream, although they also sell ads and host events, and they too seem to be doing very well.  So well, in fact, that PaidContent is being purchased by the Guardian Media Group out of the UK.

Nice to see all the hard work has paid off for Ali and his crew, and I'm also glad to see Anne continuing to do so well.  They also have shown that there's more than one way to skin a cat in the online media world.

100 vs 70

I'm in San Diego to attend a conference being held at the Loews Coronado Bay Resort.  It's a great location any time, but when the temp outside is 70 with a gentle sea breeze and the temp back home is closing in on 100 with that lovely North Carolina humidity it's even better.  Thankfully the conference organizers have scheduled some form of networking event on the terrace each day so we don't spend all of our time in windowless meeting rooms.

BTW, it's a lot more fun to attend a conference than to organize/run one.  My company's a sponsor of the event, but the way the conference is structured we aren't stuck in an exhibit booth like at other events. We're expected to participate in the interactive sessions and we're invited to participate in all networking events.  Makes for long days, but considering how many truly interesting and smart people I've met it's definitely a great experience.

Conference link: Frost & Sullivan's 4th Annual Innovations in New Product Development and Marketing 2008

Why RJ Reynolds Should Be the Biggest Arts Sponsor in the US

Winston-Salem is the home to both RJ Reynolds and the North Carolina School of the Arts.  Until now this seemed just a coincidence to me, but now I think the folks at RJR may have seen the future decades ago and worked behind the scenes to make sure the NCSA came to Winston.  Here's why: to get around smoking bans in liberal states like California and Minnesota bars are starting to have theater nights. It seems that in these states actors are allowed to light up during live performances, and so bars are staging plays and calling all the patrons actors.  Nifty!

Here's a piece about the smoking ban work-around on Boing Boing, and the article they link to in The Star Tribune, the newspaper of record in those other Twin Cities in Minnesota.

I'm thinking that RJR's marketing folks need to get hyper aggressive in promoting bar-plays AND their lobbyists need to get busy making sure this loophole doesn't close any time soon.  To push bar-plays they should print and distribute free of charge every play that features multiple characters sucking on cancer sticks.  Better yet they should commission students at NCSA to write plays in which every character smokes and have multiple crowd scenes.

And while they're at it why stop with bars?  They should see if this work-around applies to schools.  Those kids are always doing plays and I keep hearing how those commie-educators are constantly cutting back on arts programs so school plays offer a perfect opportunity for business/education synergy.

This'll show those rubes at truth who's in charge.

Disingenuous About Men

There's an agency here in Winston-Salem called Frank About Women and they specialize in, yep, marketing to women.  I'm thinking that when I launch my agency it should be called "Disingenuous About Men" because, well, isn't it obvious?  Here's a couple of blurbs from the Frank About Women home page:

We are skilled at transforming cultural knowledge into gender-savvy marketing programs.

We are immersed in the beliefs, behaviors and evolving expectations of women.

I think my blurbs would read:

We know what men want, but then who doesn't?

We have stock photos of lots of nubile women. What do you want us to put them on?

I'm gonna be rich!

Knight Topline Services...Hey, I Know Her!

Reading the Winston-Salem Journal's business section this morning I came across this article about Knight Topline Services which included these paragraphs:

The Winston-Salem heating and air-conditioning company’s bright-orange trucks and vans, for example, were painted that way to stick out among all the white heating and cooling vehicles owned by its competitors in the market.

Stacey Musco, the company’s vice president of marketing and promotions, came up with the idea to add knights on horses emerging in black and white on the vehicles, along with the company slogan: “Let our knights slay your energy dragons!”

Stacey (Motsinger) Musco is my cousin and this is one more piece of evidence in support of my claim to the title as the family's biggest slacker.

Home Office Fun

Working out of a home office has some definite upsides and downsides.  The upsides include not having to shave every day and working in sweats.  The largest downside is being your own tech support.  Take this morning (please)...I get up to my office and find that I cannot get to my email or get my browser to "find" the web.  Strangely my VOIP (Vonage) phone works and I can access my client's VPN (virtual private network).  To rectify my situation I resort to all my old tricks:

1. Re-boot the computer.  No joy.
2. Unplug the modem/router for a couple of minutes.  No joy.
3. Unplug the modem/router and the Vonage converter for a couple of minutes.  No joy.
4. Re-boot and unplug everything for a couple of minutes.  No joy.
5. Start cursing. No joy, but some relief.

I run down to Celeste's office to see if she can connect.  No problemo for her, so that means that the problem's with my PC.  Using her computer I Google my issue and get some tips involving manually resetting DNS's, pinging and other nefarious and hideously technical actions.  I continue cursing.

Upon returning to my office I decide to plug the cable from my router directly into my computer, thus bypassing Vonage.  Voila I'm online.  Still haven't totally resolved the issue, but hopefully I'm getting close.

Still cursing.

Good PR Through Good Deeds

Local graphic design firm PAVE Creative Group is getting some good PR mileage out of its sponsorship of the Bikes for the World event on November 10, 2007.  They received some notice in the local press, a mention in Smitty's Notes Winston-Salem's best resource on local happenings, and they just earned a nice mention on what I suspect is Winston-Salem's most read blog, Life in Forsyth.

Businesses have long known that they can do well by doing good, but to really do it right a company needs to make sure that its philanthropic effort is structured properly.  PAVE affiliated itself with an organization that is doing something unique (collecting bicycles for developing countries), aggressively communicated their program (Esbee shot a picture of PAVE's poster in a local store) and worked with other local groups like the Wake Forest cycling team and Simplyummy to pull off the event.  In other words they treated it like any other marketing effort which benefits them, their partners and most importantly the people they are trying to help.  Well done.

Full disclosure: Chris Patti, one of PAVE's principals, is a friend of mine.

Fec's Better Half Gets Some Press

Blasphemous blogger Fecund Stench's better half, Jody Martin, gets some nice press from the Greensboro News & Record.  The article is about her new consignment store for plus-size women's apparel, Rubenesque for Less, which she launched based on feedback from customers at her first store, Linneas.  Jeff, er Fec, gets credit for naming the store but as he points out in the article it was purely accidental.  I think that's why we get along so well; we're two guys who get by despite ourselves (some would say accidentally) and largely because we married above our means.