In a recent Newsweek article, Sarah Kliff advises that if you want your children to eat their vegetables, simply “rename them” (the vegetables, not the kids).  She explained that “When researchers told kindergarteners they were eating ‘X-ray vision carrots’ rather than plain old vegetables, the kids ate 50 percent more”.

X-ray vision carrots?  That, ladies and gentlemen, is called marketing.

The buzzsaw of toddler protest against foods that have even a trace of nutritional integrity is something I’ve experienced first hand.  A few weeks ago, I found myself in just such a impasse as I tried to explain to my three-year old why he should eat his cucumbers.  None of my erudite rationalizations swayed him.  If anything, he dug his heels in.

Then I walked over to him, rolled up my sleeve, and showed him my muscle, and said, “You see this? This is why you should eat your cucumbers!”

The result?  Argument over. 

With one look at my flexed bicep, his objections evaporated instantly and he happily devoured his cucumber slices. 

It makes sense.  After all, who can argue with a flexed bicep? 

But I would submit that this too, is marketing.  The only difference is that the latter is a visual solution, while the former is a headline-driven solution.  Either way, it’s marketing.

News flash: if you’re a parent, you’re a full-time marketer.  And your end user is pretty fickle, so choose your marketing program carefully.

Smart people, like Professor David Just of Cornell University don’t call it marketing, he calls it Behavorial Economics.  Behavorial Economics is an academic field that studies the role of environmental factors in decision making.

So if you’re an advertising or marketing professional, you’re actually a behavorial economist.  Now go home and eat your X-ray vision carrots.

Carrots contain beta-carotene which is converted to vitamin A by the body, which forms a pigment called rhodopsin, which raisies the effectiveness of the light-sensitive area of the retina, which the eye needs to see in dim light. Maybe calling them "x-ray vision carrots" isn't such an exaggeration after all.

Take the red pill.

In fact, take it now before you really need it.  That’s the lesson I’ve learned about networking.

In The Matrix, our hero is given a choice: take a blue pill and continue on with his life or take the red pill and see life as it really is.  Of course, he takes the red pill (wouldn’t be much of a movie if he didn’t), the veil is lifted and he becomes aware of things that were always there but never seen.

Lately I’ve begun to build on my own network of friends and professional colleagues, coaxing it to take form, and develop.  Actually, I’m helping it grow.  The network was always there; I just never saw it.  Then I took the red pill.

It was April 2006 when I was first asked to join a friend’s network through LinkedIn.  Sounded like fun and a good way to stay in touch with people.  But I rarely looked at it.  The next request came in October 2007.  I was flattered someone would ask me to join a network and, yeah, I felt hip.

But it wasn’t until this past February that I began to build my network in earnest.  I had to; my role had been eliminated and along with so many others folks I was in the market for a new position.

As so many at Paladin attest, you’ve got to get out and network.  This may seem rather obvious but it isn’t something all of us do when we’re employed.  Of course, some roles – from sales to marketing to politics – require networking and maintaining relationships to achieve their goals.  Networking within the organization was key to my last role.

Many job descriptions, however, do not ask you to stay in touch with people who don’t directly affect you or your work.

Because so many people are new to this networking gig, it seemed like a good idea to ask some friends from my network what they have learned along the way.   This list is by no means comprehensive, but it is road tested:

• Get out of the house – My friend Buzz put it as a simple, Nike-esque rule: “You just gotta be out there!  Go out and go to things anytime you can.”

It’s okay, everybody’s doing it.  And by “it,” I mean looking for work.  Here’s the yin and the yang of it: We all know that this isn’t the best time in the history of humankind to be looking for work.  On the other hand, the stigma of being out of work isn’t what it used to be, not when so many people are in the same position.  There’s no shame in being unemployed but somehow it seems a little easier to say “I’m in transition” when the headlines are always talking about yet another round of lay offs.  Just ask all of those former headline writers.

• Don’t be so shy – Of course, once you’re out of the house you’ve got to meet people.  “People want to help,” as my friend Katherine put it, but don’t make it difficult for them.  Give them your personal marketing plan or your newly updated resume to review.  Suggest meeting for coffee so there’s an understanding that the meeting doesn’t have to last for hours.  (And note that just because you say “Let’s meet for coffee” doesn’t mean you need to drink coffee at every meeting – especially if you have several lined up in one day.  Trust me on this one.)

Job seekers and their friends might want to read this article in The New York Times that provides some suggestions for how to give and receive help.  “The most important corollary to this rule,” Katherine points out, “is to thank people for their time and respect their schedules.”

• Be prepared – It’s not just for Boy Scouts anymore.  “Never show up unprepared even for a quick networking meeting,” said Katherine.  “You have to do your research in advance, or you waste people’s time.”  This means knowing about your contact’s business and providing something for them to use (which can be as simple as meaningful article referrals, for example, suggests Leslie).

• Back to basics – It’s all about the prompt follow-up and the personalized, hand-written thank you notes.  Making sure to write down unique reminder information on business cards. (“No,” says Leslie, “you won’t remember who all those folks are when you’re sitting in front of your computer doing the follow-up.”)

• Don’t just do something, stand there – “A lot of people don’t know how to listen,” says Buzz.  It’s not that you just sit back and watch the show.  “If you ask somebody for help, shut up and listen!  Don’t ask for advice and then overwhelm someone with your expertise!”

Here’s a surprise: You’ve already started.  As I mentioned earlier, my network was always there.  Sure, it was a little fallow and needed some tending and weeding.  But at the risk of taking this gardening metaphor too far, let’s just say you’ve bought the land already; employed or not, you need to start tilling the soil.

At a meeting of job seekers I attended, one participant put the benefits of networking this way: “I’ve lived in Chicago for 20 years.  Now it seems like a small town.”

Take the red pill.

Contributed by: Frank McGee
Business writer, trainer, coach

We have all felt the pinch in a tough economy.  Messages get jumbled and clustered together; marketers shifting campaign focus to lower cost mediums such as webcasts and social media outlets.  And emails, oh boy the emails… ping, ping, pinging away at your inbox until you cannot take anymore.  As marketers, we must refrain from jumping on the “buy from me now” podium and take a different stance in order to stand out in this challenging time. 

My message is not a novel idea by any stretch.  But why not make sure that traditional sales efforts are once again in sync with marketing - and truly integrated. If marketing launches an educational campaign, whether it be a download, a white-paper, or a prospect reach-out, companies have to make sure those leads are followed up with quickly—which means that sales communicates back with those contacts in a timely manner.  I manage marketing for an IT consulting firm and we have implemented “Marketing 101″ in a sense, where marketing provides awareness, then sales drives the client through the purchase process with the proper phone call and follow up steps.  Again, this is not a novel idea but a simple reminder in an environment where the next greatest technology has us running to catch up. 

Do not get me wrong of course, organizations and marketers in particular must stay on top of the latest technologies in order to maintain b-to-c and b-to-b reach.  But we cannot lose out on the opportunities to remain traditional in our execution. 

In a tight marketplace, it is more important to coordinate and execute marketing and sales efforts as well as you possibly can. Make it like a re-training exercise if you have to. Learn to sync up sales and marketing all over again, since opportunities are few and far between. You have to take advantage and maximize each possibility, and that means being more on the ball than ever.  Do not forget the basics!

The old adage that “time flies when you’re having fun” really hit home for me this morning. As I was reflecting on the last ten years I’ve spent in the professional working world, I realized that one of the common denominators in each of my positions has been healthcare. 

I began my career on the public relations side, working with healthcare systems and big pharma. That interest has carried over into my role in the recruiting world. In the last four years at Paladin, I’ve worked with nearly 30 healthcare associations, providers, insurers and pharma companies, providing a vast array of talent for marketing, creative, programming, membership, training, event and communications departments.  Working with marketers and creatives in this space has allowed me the opportunity to stay abreast of trends, pressures, challenges and nuances in the field.

To get an even deeper understanding of these trends, I launched a survey of my healthcare association clients last month. The goal was to better understand the marketing, membership and staffing trends within these organizations.  I think you’ll find the survey results interesting.

A few key findings:

- The healthcare association world is a “healthy” one, despite the turbulent U.S. economy. The majority of respondents noted that their overall membership base in continuing to grow and that from an organizational perspective, they plan to continue expanding in other markets.

- As with many organizations, healthcare associations are embracing the new social media movement and offering new online and interactive forums to help their members and employees communicate. Facebook and Linked-In are becoming the top social media tools in the communications arsenal of these organizations.

- In order to remain competitive, healthcare associations are expanding their product and service offerings in 2009, including e-learning programs, online conferences, and social  media tools.

I encourage you to review the full survey findings in the hope that you’ll be able to leverage them as you continue to build marketing and communications campaigns and products for your members this year.

http://www.paladinstaff.com/promo/survey-results/

I also welcome your insights and hope you will help create a larger dialogue on this topic.  Feel free to comment here, or to contact me off-line with questions, ideas, suggestions, requests or additional resources: elise@paladinstaff.com.