Communications strategist Caroline Kealey has, over the past 10 years, marched to her own drum as the founder and chief executive of Ingenium Communications.

Her consultancy has carved a niche for itself in the nation’s capital and across the country in the “art and science of communications and marketing strategy” providing, in addition to its strategic communications and marketing services, facilitation, training and organizational development.

As with so many other consultancies, regardless of their discipline, this meant that Ingenium’s intellectual property resided almost entirely within the grey matter of its people, and especially of its leader, Kealey herself.

Six years ago, Kealey decided to change that. Despite being a busy single mother with a full-time business, she set out to lever the insight and expertise developed over a 20-year career into an educational resource for professional development and training. The Ingenium team, with a substantial amount of goodwill and in-kind support from friends and allies, set to work. The outcome is the Results Map, deemed by its creators to be the most comprehensive online tool for strategic communications planning available in the world.

Kealey took the time to share her thoughts on the tenacity required to launch her new venture, the challenges of bootstrapping, and the strategic marketing that has turned a largely local consultancy into a global play within a matter of weeks.

Q: Where did you get the idea for Results Map?

A: I think the idea came from my experience in having written now close to 400 communications strategies across a wide range of sectors and clients. I realized that much of the process is quite repeatable and that we had quite a lot of expertise in this specialized area. I also realized that, while seemingly a bit odd coming from someone who makes her living as an external consultant, optimally this process is most beneficial if it’s done in-house. So, I came up with the idea to package what we’ve learned from experience and create a methodology that communicators can easily apply within their organizations, tapping into their unique knowledge and experience with their subject matter and audiences.

Q: How did you go about validating the idea?

A: This whole project has been bootstrapped on the back of our traditional consulting practice and therefore integrates hundreds of conversations as part of regular client engagements and workshops. We carried out extensive market research to establish if there is anything like this … we looked at comparable solutions for other disciplines and went through an extensive process of one-and-one interviews in 2008 with people in different facets of the industry – academia, public, private, para-public sectors. We used all this to map out a business plan and worked with a focus group of 30 people to validate the concept from both a business and marketing point of view.

Q: What key challenges did you face turning this into a commercially available product?

A: This was far and away the most significant and complex project I have ever managed. The process has been ongoing over a six-year period and has been self-financed. The sheer tenacity and the focus required was a major challenge since the project had to run alongside our regular work and business development. Stitching this together into something coherent with an end goal in mind was a very significant challenge. This is not for the faint of heart.

Q: Where did you turn for sources of funding and other support to develop and launch Results Map?

A: One of the most extraordinary experiences throughout this process has been the generosity of the community in providing expertise (and) resources and offering to make valuable connections. I was really moved to the extent to which people are willing to support an entrepreneur who has a dream. That was a big part of our success - tapping into a lot of local in-kind support, and connections. We wanted to self-finance as much as possible, but did call upon the BDC and a private investor, both of whom have been extremely supportive.

Q: How do you characterize your experience, as an entrepreneur, in trying to secure funding and other key pieces of the puzzle?

A: As is often the case, it’s hard to appreciate the sheer volume of work and energy that this has required. In terms of lessons learned, you can’t underestimate the time and effort that isn’t immediately visible when you set out - the complexity of translation to another language, finding an online payment solution that works, developing a marketing plan, and addressing innumerable technological challenges. It all takes deep consideration, analysis and quality decision-making to position the company for success, and adjust in real-time to dependencies and changes in the development plan.

Q: What key entrepreneurial lessons did you learn through this? What would you do different next time?

A: If you roll back the clock, this could have gone in many different directions. Early on I became concerned by time-to-market and that other people would come in and scoop us. But that was fairly short-lived because I had trouble imagining that there would be too many others who would have the passion to drive through such a difficult task … call it stubbornness or stick-to-it-ness, it was clear that it was the road less travelled.

Most of the development work I did on this was between 5 and 7 a.m. before I got my kids up to get ready for school; that’s obviously not everyone’s cup of tea.

The technical development of the product took place over six months. This was very aggressive and in hindsight could have been done more comfortably over a year or 18 months. However, we had committed to complete and present by June 2010 at the International Association of Business Communicators World Conference in Toronto. As a result, we licensed our training platform from Telesto, a local development firm. Again, my whole orientation was on niche expertise, not on developing a tool in-house, from the ground up. This proved to be a good decision because the time and cost required to create a platform from scratch would have been prohibitive.

Q: What has been the market response to Results Map?

A: A few weeks ago I was running a local consulting company. Now our technology is on four continents and we are writing proposals for Fortune 500 companies … We have reached into some spheres that would not have been possible two weeks ago. We even have the government of Tanzania interested in our methodology.

This is precisely what we wanted to do with this product, have a global impact, and so far it’s off to the races.

Q: How did you take advantage of your attendance at the International Association of Business Communicators World Conference to launch of Results Map?

A: We had a whole strategy to make a splash at that event to capitalize on the fact that there were 1,500 communicators there from around the world. We ran a Twitter contest, a guerilla marketing campaign, exhibited with a booth, and I was a speaker. We very much took our own advice on having a plan and executing against that plan on a shoestring budget. People told us we were one of the highlights of the event, and that is entirely the result of our careful planning in terms of marketing, planning and positioning.

Now the challenge is chasing down all of our leads. The scope of our business has exploded in the space of a couple of weeks so while I’d thought the product development was the end of a goal, it really is just the beginning.

Technorati Tags: marketing, startup, entrepreneur, Results Map, Ingenium, Telesto, online tool, Fortune 500, strategic communications, communications strategy, bootstrap, BDC

Last night, I had the honour of attending the Canadian launch of the C100 in downtown Ottawa at Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada.

What is the C100? It’s a group of those ex-pat Canadians who we refer to when we lament the “brain drain.” They have stepped up to put their time, money and Rolodexes into helping our strongest early-stage companies acquire the mentoring, business contacts and exposure to potential investors they need in North America’s hottest technology nexus — Silicon Valley.

Or to say it another way:

C100 is a non-profit, member-driven organization dedicated to supporting Canadian technology entrepreneurship and investment, comprised of a select group of Canadians based primarily in Silicon Valley, including executives of leading technology companies, experienced start-up entrepreneurs and venture capital investors.

There are Canadians that fit that bill all over the Valley said Chris Albinson, one of the founders of the C100 and co-founder and managing director of life sciences and technology investment firm Panorama Capital.

Last fall, overwhelmed by stories from disheartened Canadian entrepreneurs who were struggling to stay afloat as investment dollars dried up due to the economic downturn, as well as the demise of Nortel Networks and the impact this would have on the entire Canadian innovation ecosystem, the founders of C100 decided to do something. They looked to the examples set by other ex-pat communities in the Valley, notably the Israelis, and the networks they had set up to help start-up companies from back home make a name for themselves in the Valley.

At a dinner where 65 guests showed up despite only 50 invitations having been sent out, the audience was challenged to step up and commit to doing something. By the end of the night, 64 guests had endorsed the idea that would become the C100 and each had committed $800 to its creation.

Five months later, the C100 has earned the support and sponsorship of government, economic development agencies and technology incubators across Canada, from EDC and DFAIT, to OCRI, MaRS and Communitech in Ontario.  Seventy Canadian companies have been introduced in the Valley and provided with crucial mentoring and exposure from those who have been there and done it first.

After only five months, five of those 70 companies have secured venture capital investment — a total of US$45 million. And this is just the start.

Incidentally, one of the companies that has benefited from C100’s help is cloud data governance specialist PerspecSys of Waterloo, a new inmedia client. Only last week, PerspecSys was one of 20 Canadian companies that were part of 48hrs in the Valley, a C100 initiative carried out in partnership with the Consulate General of Canada. 48hrs is a fun and intense two-day mentoring and business development program designed to help Canadian entrepreneurs connect with the advice, resources and networks they need to grow their businesses.

While on the junket, PerspecSys competed in the elevator pitch sessions before a judging panel of hard-nosed Valley investors and other tech sector players at the Plug and Play Spring EXPO. It beat out about 40 other U.S. and Canadian companies to take top honours due to the strength of its go-to-market strategy and an innovative solution that lies at the confluence of two key growth markets – cloud computing and securing sensitive corporate data to meet compliancy requirements.

So, hat’s off to the C100 — yet another example of how adversity breeds creative leadership and opportunity. It is this kind of grassroots community effort that will drive a bright future for Canadian entrepreneurship and innovation.

Technorati Tags: C100, DFAIT, Foreign Affairs, PerspecSys, entrepreneur, Silicon Valley, Plug and Play Expo, venture capital, brain drain, cloud computing, OCRI, MaRS, Communitech, Chris Albinson, EDC

I used to be in the music business, many moons ago, and so it was with mild interest that I tuned into the Juno Awards, Canada’s national music awards show, last Sunday evening.

They were, in my humble opinion, a dreadful mess. Bieber Fever meant that viewership was up 31 percent over the previous year, but many an 11-year-old heart was broken and, no doubt, many a fervent angry letter-writing campaign begun over the fact that the Canada’s own teenybopper sensation left the awards empty handed. CARAS, the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, the outfit that puts on the Junos, should hang its head in shame that those 1.6M viewers had to stomach such dreck.

Whether it was a cost-saving measure, I don’t know, but the program had no host. No stalwart Canadian comedian to lighten the mood between the handful of on-screen awards being doled out, no Canadian music superstar for viewers to ogle, no nothing but a whole lot of, “Who is that?” and, “Have you ever heard of this performer?”

Which leads me (mercifully) to my point: the importance of gatekeepers.

Once upon a time, there were something called record labels that acted as the gatekeepers, marketers, distributors and more for music. Artists who were deemed worthy were taken under a label’s wing, polished and supported, and given the opportunity to put their best foot forward, all the while being financially supported by the label. Those days, in the main, are long done.

The fact that every Mac sold comes loaded with GarageBand, a bare-bones software that can make a recording artist out of anyone, means that if you’ve got a few minutes and the inclination, you too can release into the market your own, original music, no matter how crappy sounding. Upload it to Facebook, MySpace, YouTube. Tweet about your new song. Congratulations - you’ve just increased the noise in the signal to noise ratio and muddied the musical landscape! I couldn’t help but think of how the gatekeepers have been removed while watching a parade of such self-created unknowns at the Junos.

I’ve written before about music industry pundit Bob Lefsetz and his thoughts on how the vast amounts of media are making us more isolated from one another.

How does this apply to media relations? While I was bemoaning how wretched the Junos had been, @francismoran brought up a fair point about the removal of gatekeepers in the media as well.

Once upon a time, back when record labels did artist development, there were also lots and lots of publishers of newspapers and magazines that had editors and professional journalists and a whole bunch of other talented people whose very existence is now endangered. These professionals filtered the content that came their way and put together (most times, at least) insightful, informative, comprehensive news pieces.

Now, thanks to the Internet, blogs, microblogs and what have you, anybody can self publish anything. Want to write shoddy articles that haven’t been fact checked? Go ahead! Want to slag a person, company or product? Go for it! Care to distribute completely false information out of spite, lack of knowledge or poor journalistic standards? Today’s your lucky day!

Gatekeepers were there to filter the noise and ensure integrity of signal. It’s a shame that there is a trend toward eliminating these useful roles from so many industries. When gatekeepers remain in place in the media, as is written about in this fabulous article, the results can be positive for both the media and the consumer. New technology is incorporated into an existing information model, rather than viewed as a completely greenfield wherein everyone runs amok.

Technorati Tags: Junos, blogging, music, journalism

This past week, the news was filled with stories about people behaving badly and reminders that electronic communications leave a digital paper trail a mile long.

Personally, I feel so badly for Sandra Bullock being humiliated as she was by her philandering jerk of a spouse, having recently pronounced in front of the world and Barbara Walters how he “has her back.” Well, he had someone else’s front, it seems. And she was happy to spill all her beans and text messages to the highest bidder.

Tiger Woods, whose shoddy attempts at reconciliation with his audience through the media have been ripped apart by PR experts, has just hired a renowned sports crisis communications expert to help him crawl out from under the recent release of his disgusting text messages to a porn star with whom he had dalliances.

The trustworthiness of tattoo covered strippers and porn stars really took a hit this week…

The chair of the Toronto Transit Commission, having already dropped out of that city’s mayoral race because of his affair, has now been discovered to have charged the city of Toronto for a cab ride he took to meet his mistress. Torontonians, already demanding his resignation as head of the beleaguered TTC, are now even more riled up.

While these particular individuals behaving badly have made many egregious personal decisions, it’s astounding to think that it never occurred to them that their text messages and receipts wouldn’t come back to haunt them. In this digital era, almost everything we do is recorded, logged and accessible to refer back to, especially emails, texts, blog posts, Tweets… More than once, this has been advantageous to me when a client or a reporter claims, “I never said that” or, “I never approved that” and I have the email to refer back to. (Thank heavens I’m an electronic packrat!) This can, as we’ve seen this week, work against you if you’ve got something to hide or if you’re trying to cheat the system in some way.

First, don’t be a jerk. Straighten up and fly right; if your moral compass is way off (personally or professionally) you’re bound to get caught sooner or later. Recognize the immeasurable damage that will be done to your brand, your professional standing, your employer and employees, and others if you make terrible decisions and get caught red-handed. Is it worth it? Really?

Second, don’t put anything in writing you wouldn’t stand behind later on. There have been plenty of misguided, poorly conceived reactionary news releases or statements made by executives that have haunted them for years. Don’t be that guy or gal.

Technorati Tags: Crisis communications, media relations, cheating, paper trail

My husband and I went to see Avatar over the weekend. Wow. The visually stunning spectacle has been director James Cameron’s pet project for more than 10 years, his last major theatrical release being a little movie called Titanic. The movie is in 3D but it’s so unobtrusive and simply enhances the story without going for corny effects, a novel approach to an older technology, enhancing rather than interrupting the storytelling process.

It was an inspired move by Cameron to hire virtual unknowns in the lead roles, but a mistake, despite her considerable talent, that he cast Sigourney Weaver in the film because, more than once, it felt like I was watching Aliens or even Gorillas in the Mist. For the same reason he put faces to those with whom we have had little or no previous associations in the lead roles, he should have cast an unknown in Weaver’s role; this was the only distraction that took me out of the marvelous world of Pandora and back into North America, circa late 2009.

I don’t want to spoil the storyline of the movie for anyone who hasn’t yet seen it but plans to, but suffice to say that while the movie is well worth seeing and elements of the film’s story are absolutely creative and novel, the vast majority of the plot is well trodden territory. Thematic elements are very reminiscent of [SPOILER ALERT!] this, and this.

There’s nothing new under the sun, they say, and the same is true when it comes to marketing. While it’s true that in the realm of technology, there are truly revolutionary products being released, there are also a slate of products that are only slight modifications on existing offerings or have very little if anything unique about them, rather they are “me too!” propositions. That’s okay - consumers need options at different price points with different feature sets, and other distinguishing attributes, however small.

The challenge becomes how to market your offering when the basic story (of your product, your company, your industry …) has been told many, many times before. Take a page from James Cameron’s book and find novel ways to tell a familiar tale, use new technology to do so and make it compelling to your audience. In our terms, this means to use novel marketing approaches like social media to communicate your key messages to your prospects and customers, providing them with the information they need in a format that’s interesting to them and that will get them talking to other prospects about why your offering is the one to see and why your marketing campaign is better than that of your competitors.

Technorati Tags: Avatar, James Cameron, marketing

A quick browse through my Google reader shows that it’s that time again. No, not the holidays. It’s time to gaze into the marketing crystal ball and make bold predictions about where marketing dollars will be spent in the upcoming year, what communications trends will appear and how we as marketers can best lever this knowledge.

I don’t pretend to be extraordinarily prescient when it comes to these things, so I’m going to put down my own crystal ball and instead point to a few posts on other blogs that might illuminate the near future for marketers.

A LinkedIn question about New Years resolutions for CEOs has garnered 5 responses so far. What are your clients’ resolutions for 2010 and where do your services fit into those plans?

According to this post, it’s going to be all about social media and email next year.

Will portable identities take off like this post predicts? Will B2B companies further expand usage of social media and take advantage of this brand portability?

And finally, this post predicts all of the above will take place in 2010.

Do you have any predictions for the year ahead?

Technorati Tags: social media, email, marketing, 2010, predictions

This week, Amazon announced that it would be introducing its digital e-book reader, the Kindle, to more than 100 countries. Canada didn’t make the cut, much to the consternation of Canadian authors and book lovers alike. What made the announcement even more difficult to swallow is that internationally contentious and little known countries are on the list, yet Canada is not. This is a PR nightmare for Amazon in Canada as every major outlet has covered this extensively.

Why exactly Amazon is so slow to roll out the Kindle to Canada is a matter of much debate - is it our copyright laws? Our telecommunications networks and service providers? The Globe and Mail seems to think it’s our carriers (Bell and Rogers strike again!) No official answers are available. Apparently Amazon says that a Canadian Kindle is coming, but offers neither timelines nor prices.

Our clients often subscribe to the adage “if I sell one in Canada, it’s by accident,” and this Kindle snafu may be a simple extension of that. Our market is relatively small, certainly when compared with the U.S., but if Mongolia and Kirabati (?!?) are getting the Kindle, it can’t be market size that Amazon’s concerned with.

Someone made an offhand comment a few weeks ago, comparing our home and native land with a little, out of the way country in South America. I scoffed a little bit and this Kindle fiasco has affirmed my guffaw somewhat, though entirely counter to what I had initially thought… You guessed it; that little South American country is getting the Kindle, but we’re not.

My family is taking a quick jaunt to the States in a few weeks, to buy things not available here. The purpose of our shopping trip is not to take advantage of the strong Canadian dollar, a nice benefit, to be sure, but to relish in the immense selection that is available in America. We have a particular affinity for a number of clothing brands not available in Canada. Oh sure, we can ship them here from the States, for an extortionate fee, but there’s no brick and mortar or even domestic shipping outlet for these stores. Our only recourse is to gather our passports and make the journey to the U.S. The lower prices, the lower tax rate, and the great selection draw us in.

That said, I’d happily shop at these stores if they were in Canada, pay the inflated prices and hand over roughly 10% more sales tax, in order to support local jobs, infrastructure, etc. But in cases like the Kindle, we’re utterly shafted. There’s no local support, no cross-border option, nada. Zip. Woe is us.

Credit: Image a mashup by Christopher Moran using copyright-free images.

Technorati Tags: Kindle, Amazon, Bell, Rogers, Canada

For the first time in practically the decade-long lifespan of this technology-focused PR agency, I did not attend any part of the Ottawa Venture and Technology Summit held last week at the Chateau Laurier. Actually, that’s not quite true; I went to a packed StartUp Drinks in the Byward Market on Wednesday night and from there popped briefly into the thinly-attended Young Venture Capitalists OVTS networking event that was happening just a few doors away. But the point is, I didn’t see any of the company presentations, hear any of the speeches or, most importantly, glom onto any of the corridor scuttlebutt that is usually the most interesting aspect of these things.

In the days since, I have heard various reports from attendees from across the investor-entrepreneur spectrum and I have read what little reportage made the public record. Very little of what I’ve heard or read left me terribly hopeful that a new crop of exciting Ottawa technology ventures was about to get funded any time soon. The most consistent sentiment seemed to be contained in the comment VG Partners managing general partner Pat DiPietro made in an Ottawa Business Journal story on the fact that the OVTS and a similar event in Banff had a scheduling overlap. “But on the other hand there are no VCs investing, so it doesn’t really matter right now,” DiPietro said.

This caused me to wonder if venture fairs have passed their sell-by date. Can anyone remember the last company that could claim to have met at one of these things the connection that led to successful funding?

Then my pal James Smith weighed in on his newish blog, Startup Great White North. Unlike me, James not only attended the Ottawa venture fair, he also winged out west to the Banff shindig. Despite the fact he there witnessed “institutional investors focused principally on shaking off modest Thursday night hangovers and cradling Blackberrys and iPhones like long-lost friends” rather than paying attention to the entrepreneurs’ pitches, he decided in the end that investors don’t regard those pitching companies “with the attention my mini-van driving wife might give to passing picked-over roadkill on the road to our cottage.”

I’m not sure I’m as persuaded as James but he does go on to provide a solid list of techniques that serious venture-seeking entrepreneurs can deploy to improve their outcomes from such an event.

While we’re on the question of the utility of VC fairs, we might as well start asking questions about the utility of the VC model itself. We have begun work on a series of articles about this very question. We will look at who is actually funding startups in Canada, the U.S. and Europe. We’ll ask experts which pieces of the model work and which don’t. And most importantly, we’ll examine the state of the ecosystem beyond VCs that needs to be in place to help companies, especially those that will never be VC-fundable, bring their technology to market. We’ll look at the proliferation of new government funding here in Canada and compare it with what’s in place in other markets. If you believe you have a perspective on this, we’d love to hear from you. You can email me at fmoran (at) inmedia.com.

Technorati Tags: Venture capital, investment, Ottawa Venture and Technology Summit, Banff Venture Forum, Pat DiPietro, James Smith, technology, technology marketing

I read a controversial piece yesterday on Mediabistro. Apparently, President Obama has been quoted as saying that he’s open to looking at bailing out the newspaper industry. My personal opinion is that a bailout isn’t what the newspaper industry needs, for reasons I’ll get into shortly. But first, I’d like to talk about the news industry’s PR problem.

A direct quote from the president said the following, “I am concerned that if the direction of the news is all blogosphere, all opinions, with no serious fact-checking, no serious attempts to put stories in context, that what you will end up getting is people shouting at each other across the void but not a lot of mutual understanding.”

What this says to me is that the news industry has a PR problem, is poorly understood by even the highest office in the land (one whose media-savvy campaign largely propelled him into the Oval Office) and is struggling to find its identity as news formats shift from dead trees to zeros and ones.

There is a common misconception that online news is strictly commentary, often characterized by the opinion-based content to which President Obama refers. Reliable and intelligent news is well researched, fact checked and placed in context, regardless of whether it’s online or off. Until this fundamental understanding is well communicated and well understood, and until the industry adheres to its own best practices, the news business will remain the subject of much consternation.

As to why I don’t believe the news industry should get a bailout? I had a ringside seat for the spectacular downfall of the music industry. Having studied the music industry at two post-secondary institutions (yes, Virginia, there really is rock and roll school), I learned about its outmoded revenue model and watched as the record labels clamored to find alternative revenue streams. In short, the industry failed to adapt to the consumer’s wants and needs and so those consumers simply circumvented the record companies.

In much the same way, consumers of news no longer want or expect to wait until tomorrow to see the news in print; rather, they want the news when they want it. The journalistic integrity of marquee outlets remains strong, whether people are consuming their news in print or online. Some of our clients’ most important media targets are strictly online; this does not diminish their impact nor their influence on the purchasing decisions of those holding the purse strings.

Rather than bail out an industry so that it can maintain an antiquated way of doing things, let these outlets find new and current methods for getting their product out to the consumer. Let’s hope the news industry learns something from the shoddy example set by the music industry that clearly missed the boat.

Technorati Tags: Bailout, newspaper industry, music industry, President Obama

I dipped back into my former life for a night last week when I went to Toronto to see U2 at the Rogers Centre. It was incredible.

We were lucky enough to have general admission tickets that enabled us to get as close as we wanted to to the stage, which was close. In order to do so, though, we waited in line outside of the venue for most of the day. Thank heaven for the PDA or it would have been considerably more challenging to fill the time. Liveblogging the lineup would have been far too boring for anyone not there (it was pretty boring in the lineup itself) but it was great to be able to check emails, Tweet when the mood struck, and catch up on online news.

When my phone worked, that is.

Having a Rogers iPhone on the Rogers network outside (and later inside) the Rogers Centre, one would think that reception would be stellar, that the data network would be lightning fast. One would be wrong.

The conspiracy theorist in me wonders if the fact that Blackberry was sponsoring the U2 tour impacted the service. Anecdotally, those attending the show who were using Blackberries didn’t seem to have the same frustrating lack of network access that we on the Rogers network did. Good to know that Elvis Costello could check his emails on his Blackberry with impunity while the rest of us with a Rogers account had to be contented with just basking in the glow of the many Rogers’ logos that surrounded us, rather than a functional network.

More than once in surveying round-ups and reviews of the show, I came across sentiments similar to “Did your Rogers iPhone on the Rogers network work at the Rogers Centre tonight?  Mine didn’t.” The company, which struggles with its reputation as a reliable service provider, something we’ve addressed at other times on this blog, missed a golden opportunity to knock it out of the park, a park that was filled with 58,000 U2 fans, two nights in a row, that in today’s era of social media and pervasive user-created content would be sharing their experience at the show, something that extends beyond just the performance of the band itself.

Image: Open Clip Art Library.

Technorati Tags: Rogers, U2, Blackberry