Life in the Time of COVID-19

With all due respect to Gabriel García Márquez, I find this blog title apt. 

As a marketing professional who is a strategist and writer at heart with strong investigative journalistic and analytical proclivities, I crave a solid/robust conversation that examines all angles. Consider this blog series as a “Beach House” Captain’s Log. My condo is the “Beach House.” I am the Captain of my Beach House.

March 25, 2020, Akron, OH – It’s been a week + 2 days since my daughter returned home from college. She seems to think she will return to her Chicago apartment after her ‘Spring Break’ to finish her junior year at university. Chicago, like the entire state of Ohio is on stay at home status. I try to let her know reality in incremental stages. Now that she’s an ‘adult’ I recognize it’s important for her to come to her own conclusions. I pull from my previous account management / sales experience tactics to guide her mindset to join mine.

I’m spending $700 a month on an empty Chicago apartment. Having my daughter home is worth it, and let’s be honest – this ‘expenditure annoyance’ is NOTHING compared to those losing their jobs.

I work remotely in global high-tech/digital transformation. I help Microsoft Partners sell their technology via Go-To-Market (GTM) strategy and initiatives. It’s these companies that contribute to global digital transformation. Whereas that helps me sleep at night, I worry about the digital divide, now that nearly nationally, our education system is now on-line.

• Don’t even get me started about the challenge to provide food fuel for so many of our kids who rely on our education system for their main meals.
• Don’t even get me started about the challenge to care for our Foster Kids Population.
• Don’t get me started on a number of things. Let’s focus on how we can help.

If you’re a digital marketing agency:

• adopt a non-profit and provide them amplification services
• have your team(s) help via IRL volunteering action (in a safe manner)
• support your employees’ neighborhood needy folks – the elderly, those who have disabled family members, those who are struggling for health reasons, the single parents….
• support food banks
• reach out to school systems to see how your business can help

 

 

 

Tech Community’s Annual Soft Invasion of a Boat and an Airport: Cleveland GiveCamp’s Butterfly Effect

Each summer, 20 Cleveland area non-profits receive a gift from Cleveland GiveCamp. Hundreds of Cleveland’s brightest techies swarm together like Lake Erie mayflies each summer, squeezing one work week into a weekend. Since its inception, Cleveland GiveCamp has donated nearly $4 million of free development work to more than 250 regional non-profits. Its tribe of volunteer software developers, designers, content developers, and database administrators converge at Cleveland Burke Lakefront Airport and LeanDog’s boat (yes, their office is a boat!), which is moored adjacent to the airport. Participants are encouraged to pitch tents and camp all weekend. Some glamp and stay in downtown hotels. They all give back and make NEO aka Northeast Ohio better.

Prior to working in global high tech marketing, I spent 10 years marketing and branding non-profits. Trust me when I say know how tight non-profits’ budgets can be. For the last six years, I’ve been both a recipient (Community Greenhouse Partners) and a volunteer providing website content and as a member of the Social Media team. The annual event is dear to my heart and one my summer highlights.

Andy Craze played an instrumental role spearheading CLE GiveCamp in 2010. More than 100 volunteers, 21 nonprofits and nearly $250,000 worth of work was donated during the course of GiveCamp’s inaugural weekend. NEO can thank Andy for much of this credit. Each subsequent year Cleveland GiveCamp grows larger, improving NEO’s non-profit footprint.

He lost his battle with cancer not too long ago and we all miss him like crazy. At the close of the weekend, we honored him by announcing the Craze eCool Awards. Andy’s partner Jane Winik and friend Bob Coppedge, CEO of Simplex-IT coordinate the award, now in its second year. Last year I helped write the content for one of the two winners, Empowering Youth Exploring Justice. Northeast Ohio Voter Advocates (NOVA) was the co-winner. This year the winners circle expanded to three: Akron Blind Center, University Settlement, and Womankind Cleveland, OH.

The gift is reciprocal. The weekend provides an opportunity for the tech community to connect with each other, the nonprofit community, and collaborate with others outside their direct work environments. Skills sharpen. Networks expand. Friends are made. Both communities are strengthened. And like the butterfly effect, the region improves and shines a bit brighter year after year.

The Cleveland GiveCamp event is part of a national GiveCamp initiative thought up by a Microsoft executive in 2007. There are nearly 30 GiveCamps throughout the country benefiting hundreds of non-profits every year. Nominations are considered by the steering committee months prior. Check out the list of this year’s Cleveland GiveCamp participants and apply for 2018’s event.

Props to Katrina Blatt @KATinCLE for this photo. She’s a new volunteer to Cleveland GiveCamp, joining @PhotoAlBell visually documenting our event.

On Being a Rock Star…

Welcome to my blog! I’m starting out with what is called a ‘soft opening.’ So if you’re reading this, you’ve either been invited or you’re really, really good at searching out my name! I’d like to think of myself as a marketing rock star, but to be a true marketing rock star, you gotta blog. I’ll be focusing this blog on ‘all things integrated marketing.’

There are hundreds of great industry bloggers ‘out there’ and it’s because of this great talent that stopped me from sharing my voice. However, I thought it might be a great idea to share in one place, namely, ‘here,’ those voices that I find especially ‘spot on.’

IRT marketing aka In Real Time marketing is one area that true integrated marketing Rock Stars are doing. I’m sharing Marketo’s blog about IRT marketing. I think it’s timely because I’m starting to see bad examples creep in my Facebook feed by companies leveraging the recent Moore, Oklahoma tornado tragedy into their self-promoting posts. Rather than to focus on the bad, let’s focus on the good. Marketo’s blog shares ‘good’ examples on how to do IRT marketing correctly.

Personally, I’m impressed with any organization that embraces IRT marketing. Done correctly, it elevates engagement to a higher level.

You can read Marketo’s blog here: http://lnkd.in/2EJcuF