"Buy our product and it will enhance efficiency, productivity, and profits beyond your wildest dreams. If you don't buy it, you are doomed to failure." 

The marketing business is based on a fundamental premise: That what a person perceives to be true, is that person's reality. As a result, all marketing messages have a common goal: to revise perceptions. The marketer's job is to elicit an epiphany in the hearts and minds of prospects that replaces their perception of status quo with a new vision and an undeniable urge for action, for example, to purchase a product or service, to pursue a recruitment opportunity, or to volunteer for public service. 

Thus, the objective of all marketing communications is to energize a prospect into a particular action: "Buy our product and you will enhance efficiency, productivity, and profits beyond your wildest dreams. If you don't buy it, you are doomed to failure." 

My first tasks after being hired by IPeria, a software firm in Burlington, Massachusetts, (see resume) were based on putting this philosophy into action. Fast.

The Big Three problems and their solutions.

As my new boss at IPeria put it, there were "flames everywhere."  At the time, Vice President of Marketing, later to become President and CEO, he tasked me with the three most critical problems he felt the firm faced. As he put it, these "big three" were generating "the flames nearest the gasoline can."  I had another new job: corporate firefighter.

"There are flames everywhere!" 

1. Create new positioning & branding. 

Problem one was that the company had yet to position itself and clearly differentiate itself from the competition. My highest priority task was to create new positioning and branding -- an entirely new strategic corporate image and graphic "look and feel" that was appropriate to the telecommunications industry, and also acceptably distinctive, to reflect the powerful capabilities of its Next Generation telecommunications software product. 

I would then apply the new graphic elements to the design and layout of every marcom item, including brochures, data sheets, stationery, trade show booth displays, Web site, and product labels. This was a rich and challenging opportunity.

CLICK TO SEE THE BRANDING SOLUTION

Web site management and hosting had been contracted to an outside creative vendor by previous management. The costs were staggering. Creative design costs had accrued to about $100,000 by the time I was hired. Hosting of the site was subcontracted by the vendor to a hosting firm and billed with a stiff markup to IPeria at $500 monthly. We, the client, couldn't make changes to the site because the vendor retained exclusive access to the hosting server and  billed revisions at $100 per hour. Revisions had to be e-mailed to the vendor, who typically took at least 48 hours to post them. Rush changes incurred a surcharge multiple of the usual hourly rate. IPeria was accruing usual and expected operation and maintenance costs for the Web site of at least $1,000 to $1,500 per month.

CLICK TO SEE THE WEB SITE SOLUTION...AND MORE

3. "Our printing costs are killing us!"

A substantial challenge -- as my boss colorfully described it, "one of the flames closest to the gasoline can" -- was to cut the costs of printing collateral materials -- brochures and data sheets (which I was already writing). The specifications of the firm's pioneering software product were in constant flux, continually threatening printed materials with obsolescence. 

Both my boss and I were tired of throwing away really heavy boxes containing thousands of expensive, obsolete brochures and "tell-the-whole-story" kit covers printed by our predecessors. It was criminal wastage for the venture capital funded company. My directive was to print only as many copies of data sheets or brochures as we needed quickly, for example to hand out at a customer presentation or a trade show, typically a few hundred copies at most, until the next inevitable revisions were needed. A deluxe but timeless kit cover was also urgently needed.

Traditional printing methods typically required 4 to 5 working days, and incurred fixed press make-ready and proofing charges of at least $500 plus per job, regardless of the number of pieces being printed. Rush charges for faster turnaround could be twice or even three times the standard rates for 48-hour service--could overwhelm our limited printing budget. To solve this problem drew from my production experience with ad agencies and corporate marcom production -- and new technology available from a trusted vendor.

CLICK TO SEE THE PRINTING COSTS SOLUTION