As I sit here at our region’s first Startup Weekend, it is clear that there’s something happening here when it comes to Cincinnati’s entrepreneurial scene.  That magic is in the air as we watch over 100 people work on launching a startup in just 54 hours.  The success of this event builds on the momentum of the last 12 months that includes:

• Venture for America announced that Cincinnati is going to be part of their inaugural class of 4 cities starting Summer 2012.
• The Brandery had a busy year as we moved into our new home into Over the Rhine and the Kauffman Fellows named us one of the Top 10 Startup Accelerators in the country.  Demo Day for our 2011 class also exceeded expectations as 350 people gathered to watch the pitches of our 8 companies.  These attendees included Venture Capitalists nationwide who traveled to town from New York City, Boston, Austin and Chicago.
• Cincinnati born Share This was named by Forbes as one of America’s Most Promising Companies.  And Cincinnati based Spark People reached 11.5 million members.
• Cincinnati took the title of Most Social City for Mashable’s Social Media Day.  And fittingly, Twitter opened up their Cincinnati office.
• Several Cincinnati startups closed significant fundraising rounds including ThinkVine’s $8MM Series C and AssureRX’s $8MMSeries B from Claremont and Sequoia.  CincyTech also added 11 companies to their portfolio, bringing the total to 30 since 2007.
• The region also saw a major exit in 2011, with CincyTech and Queen City Angels portfolio company Blue Ash Therapeutics sold to Forest Labs.
• Driven by Laura Baverman, Cincinnati.com launched Enter Change to cover great ideas in our region.
• Cincinnati is #1 in the country in voting for StartupBus at this year’s SXSW with over 500 votes

“Everybody look what’s going down…“

I just finished reading Mark Cuban’s new ebook How to Win at the Sport of Business: If I Can Do It, You Can Do It. Considering it only costs $2.99, there is no reason for you not to go buy it right this minute.

While the entire thing is a great read, I particularly enjoyed a chapter at the end entitled “12 Cuban Rules for Startups.”. They include:

1. Don’t start a company unless it’s an obsession and something you love.
2. If you have an exit strategy, it’s not an obsession.
3. Hire people who you think will love working there.
4. Sales Cure All. Know how your company will make money and how you will actually make sales.
5. Know your core competencies and focus on being great at them. Pay up for people in your core competencies. Get the best. Outside the core competencies, hire people that fit your culture but are cheap.
6. An espresso machine? Are you kidding me? Shoot yourself before you spend money on an espresso machine. Coffee is for closers. Sodas are free. Lunch is a chance to get out of the office and talk. There are 24 hours in a day, and if people like their jobs, they will find ways to use as much of it as possible to do their jobs.
7. No offices. Open offices keep everyone in tune with what is going on and keep the energy up. If an employee is about privacy, show them how to use the lock on the john. There is nothing private in a startup. This is also a good way to keep from hiring execs who cannot operate successfully in a startup. My biggest fear was always hiring someone who wanted to build an empire. If the person demands to fly first class or to bring over a personal secretary, run away. If an exec won’t go on sales calls, run away. They are empire builders and will pollute your company.
8. As far as technology, go with what you know. That is always the cheapest way. If you know Apple, use it. If you know Vista … ask yourself why, then use it. It’s a startup, there are just a few employees. Let people use what they know.
9. Keep the organization flat. If you have managers reporting to managers in a startup, you will fail. Once you get beyond startup, if you have managers reporting to managers, you will create politics.
10. NEVER EVER EVER buy swag. A sure sign of failure for a startup is when someone sends me logo-embroidered polo shirts. If your people are at shows and in public, it’s okay to buy for your own folks, but if you really think someone is going to wear your YoBaby.com polo when they’re out and about, you are mistaken and have no idea how to spend your money.
11. NEVER EVER EVER hire a PR firm. A PR firm will call or email people in the publications you already read, on the shows you already watch and at the websites you already surf. Those people publish their emails. Whenever you consume any information related to your field, get the email of the person publishing it and send them a message introducing yourself and the company. Their job is to find new stuff. They will welcome hearing from the founder instead of some PR flack. Once you establish communication with that person, make yourself available to answer their questions about the industry and be a source for them. If you are smart, they will use you.
12. Make the job fun for employees. Keep a pulse on the stress levels and accomplishments of your people and reward them. My first company, MicroSolutions, when we had a record sales month, or someone did something special, I would walk around handing out $100 bills to salespeople. At Broadcast.com and MicroSolutions, we had a company shot. The Kamikaze. We would take people to a bar every now and then and buy one or ten for everyone. At MicroSolutions, more often than not we had vendors cover the tab. Vendors always love a good party.

Tonight I received the great news that Rockfish is one of ten finalist for the inaugural iMedia Agency of the Year Awards.  With iMedia being one of the leading sources of digital marketing news and insight, this is quite the honor.  But being nominated doesn’t mean that we are the winner.  That title will go to the agency that receives the most votes between now and Friday, November 18th.

I am not one to ask for a favor, but this is one of those cases where I will go out on a limb and ask for help.   If you have been impressed with the work we are doing at Rockfish, please take the time to vote for us at the iMedia Agency Awards.  I’d really appreciate your support.  And if you really like us, it would be great if you encouraged folks to vote for @Rockfish in all of your social channels as well (Twitter, Facebook, etc)

Also, our friends at Empower MediaMarketing are up for two awards (Out-of-Home and Integrated Marketing) so please lend your support to them as well.

Thank you for your help.  This will now end the commercial message.  I appreciate you listening.

This week I am taking part in a fun experiment with a new startup called Roundtable.    Roundtable describes itself in the following way:

At Roundtable we’re all about empowering meaningful conversations – between thought leaders, between friends, and between curated communities of strangers.

It is a really neat concept and one I became interested in after reading a Roundtable on Startup Funding that was hosted a few weeks ago.  I decided to jump at the chance to have Rockfish host a Roundtable on the Future of Digital Marketing.  After all, we call ourselves a “Digital Innovation Partner” so it is a topic that is at the heart of what we do.  My goal was to bring together Marketers, Venture Capitalists and Startups to discuss and debate on where Digital Marketing will go in the next few years.  We were able to pull together a really world-class group of digital thought leaders including:

• Chris Erb, VP of Brand Marketing for EA SPORTS
• Chris Fralic, Managing Partner at First Round Capital
• Jason Falls, author of “No Bullshit Social Media”
• Jon Steinberg, President of BuzzFeed
• Pete Blackshaw, Global Head of Digital and Social Marketing for Nestle

What is really neat about Roundtable is that anyone can join in the commentary with this great group of all-stars. So please take the time to head over to our Roundtable this week and share your thoughts on the Future of Digital Marketing.

Thanks for the folks at SocialTimes, I came across one of the coolest Kickstarter campaigns that I have seen yet.  ”Kentucky for Kentucky” is aiming to accomplish the following:

With your help, we are going to crowd-fund, produce, and air the most epically kick ass Super Bowl 2012 commercial for the great Commonwealth of Kentucky. For Kentucky by Kentuckians. That’s what it means to a be a Commonwealth. It’s a project that Kentuckians all around the world will be proud to be apart of. Join us, become a Kentuckian.

While I was not born in Kentucky, I have become an adopted son since moving here in 2008.  After all, I married a Kentucky girl and enjoy a good glass of Kentucky bourbon.  So there is nothing I would like to see more than our great state celebrated on the world’s biggest stage.

The campaign has raised $70K thus far but they have a long ways to go in order to reach their goal by November 7th.  I’m hoping that one of the state’s large corporations (Yum! Brand, Humana, or even Zappos) might get behind the cause.  If you agree, please do your part and head over to Kickstarter.

On behalf of Rockfish Brand Ventures, I was invited to give a presentation to the CEO’s and Founders of CincyTech’s portfolio companies on digital marketing.

This week, Facebook will hold its annual F8 Developers Conference in San Francisco.  Much like Apple’s WDC, this event has become the time of year when Facebook announces the biggest changes on their platform.  Given the 800MM+ users on Facebook and the $2 billion plus in advertising spent on the site, that means F8 is in turn a must watch event for Brand Marketers.

So what should Brand Managers be on the lookout for this week?  Based on rumors and leaks, it looks like there should be at least three announcements of interest:

Mini News Feed:

When Facebook is testing new features on the site, they occasionally leak out to the general public.  One such escape into the wild was the “mini news feed” that appears on the top right hand corner of the screen, following a user throughout the site.  This change is pretty significant because it has the potential of changing how people interest on the site, increasing engagement as updates become even more in your face.  This has the potential to be a win for brands for two reasons.   First, there is a good chance that Sponsored Stories will appear here, which only increase the visibility of that ad format.  Second, Brand Page updates will also appear in this feed, increasing the chance that consumers will actually interact with the content your brand publishes.

Facebook Music:

The only area where MySpace still had an edge on Facebook was in entertainment, particularly music.  That looks to change this week with the launch of Facebook Music.  Apparently Facebook will be partnering with at least 5 music services including Spotify to launch a platform similar to Facebook Games.  Much like the way Facebook uses game developers to do the heavy lifting on creating the games, Facebook will be the front end / dashboard for these music services.  Given what Facebook already knows about a users interests / tastes, this will be an interesting angle for music discovery.  It will also be interesting to see how deeply Facebook embeds their Credits system into the music services.  Regardless, music is one of the most popular marketing channels of brands and there will be immediate opportunities for a multitude of music promotions with Facebook now.

Facebook iPad App:

TechCrunch confirmed the news of this launch several weeks ago but this one is way overdue.  Tablets are a great viewing platform for Facebook and its been a glaring miss for both that no app existed.   The launch of app itself doesn’t really create any new opportunities for Facebook but it does create another channel for increased engagement on the platform.

This week The Brandery received some nice news coverage courtesy of local ABC affiliate WCPO.   The coverage came in parallel to a press conference by former Sequoia Capital VC Mark Kvamme who recently served as the Director of the Ohio Department of Development.   The coverage revolved around the effort by The Brandery to create high growth jobs through Consumer Internet startups.

If the above video doesn’t work, you can see the video at http://youtu.be/Z_jH5SRuMbQ

The following post was originally written as a guest post for Rob Go from NextView Ventures.

As LinkedIn, Zynga, Groupon and other Web 2.0 darlings file to go public, we begin to get a glimpse into the financials behind these companies.  This naturally leads people to speculate on the still private financials of other Web 2.0 leaders such as Facebook and Twitter.  Twitter in particular is an interesting one given that they raised another $800 million at an $8.4 billion valuation.  This valuation is for a company with 200 million users and estimated revenues of around $200 million, equating to a steep multiple of 40 times sales for the microblogging service.

If Twitter is going to prove deserving of this valuation, their success will be directly tied to brand marketers continuing to embrace the service, especially with their ads platform.  In other words, Twitter needs marketers to spend money with them, and in order to do so, it must prove that it is an “effective” tool in the marketing mix.  It is that word “effective” that often proves the stumbling block in these digital discussions, largely due to how the word is misunderstood and in turn, misused.

Generally speaking, when a brand marketer talks about a tool being effective, they are referring to the ROI it generates.  For the most sophisticated marketers, this is accomplished through Marketing Mix Modeling where they can directionally attribute a dollar spent to the short-term return in sales. To further explain this, Forrester has a great overview on the subject.  Direct marketers and retailers take a more direct path in ROI, directly attributing sales to a particular channel. A prime reflection of this is how Dell can claim to have sold $6.5 million through Twitter in 2009 (though it is surprising that Dell has not shared any additional information since 2009, especially given the growth of Twitter’s audience).

Effective can also refer to how well a tool works in the Marketing Funnel.  The traditional funnel includes Awareness, Consideration, Preference, Action and Loyalty, though some marketers have reclassified that funnel to instead include Acquire, Engage and Convert.  If a tool is effective in the Marketing Funnel, it means that it allows a brand to succeed in driving one of these strategies.  For instance, TV – or any mass media for that matter – has proven to be an effective tool for driving awareness for years, thus the reason that Super Bowl ads that are known to effectively do this with a very large audience.

So with this definition in mind, the question that naturally arises is if Twitter can be an effective tool for marketers.  For me, I am bullish overall on the potential for Twitter to be effective across each area step in the “Marketing Funnel”.

Twitter’s Role in Acquire

Twitter is a very effective tool for awareness, offering brands a quick and affordable channel to distribute content around a brand launch or campaign.  But one of the other biggest opportunities for Twitter comes from the data that the platform can provide marketers.  As Mark Suster recently wrote, “Twitter is really the place where the public conversation is happening. It is the town hall.”  In this town hall, marketers can uncover significant market research, not only about their brands but also about their competitors and consumers overall.  The Market Research industry is a multi-billion dollar industry and companies like Nielsen and dunnhumby have become massive businesses by providing data and research to brand marketers.  This research and data serves as the first step in almost every marketing strategy as brands determine how to acquire new customers.  One could argue that Twitter is not a representative sample of the population and that is probably true.  However, the heaviest users of Twitter also tend to be influencers and early adopters.  As such, this vocal majority is a solid indicator from a data standpoint of what an influential core of customers might believe.  The data might not be completely scientifically validated but it should be enough to be a basis to guide brand decisions.

Twitter’s Role in Engage

Engagement is one of the areas that Twitter talks about most for their platform.  In fact, they even define engagement with a promoted tweet as being “clicks, retweets, favorites and replies.” There are two major areas where Twitter can drive engagement for brand marketers: customer service and engagement. In regard to customer service, the digitally connected generation turns online before they turn to a 1-800 number.  When a customer today has a bad experience with a brand or product, they often turn online to vent their frustrations.  In the past, an upset customer may vent by just yelling at the person on the customer service hot line and maybe tell two of their friends. Now a simple tweet or post can reach thousands, and maybe even millions.  In turn, brands can use Twitter to engage with their customers and solve customer service problems before they become big customer service problems. The second area of engagement is capitalizing on the trend of brands as publishers, which might be the biggest trend in marketing over the next decade.  Twitter is a great channel to leverage to have your consumers engage with your content.  This is at the heart of what Old Spice did with the “Responses” campaign last year.  It is also one channel that American Express uses for distributing their OPEN Forum content to drive engagement.  This type of positive engagement drives conversion and ultimately advocacy.  Twitter’s business challenge will be how to monetize their role in Brands as Publishers, but they are starting off in a very strong position.

Twitter’s Role in Convert

When it comes to convert, it is really about driving purchase.  Surprisingly, Twitter is emerging as an effective example of social commerce in this regard.  For years, Dell Outlet has famously used the platform to drive several million dollars’ worth of sales.  Meanwhile, fans of LivingSocial have extensively used Twitter to promote the “Share for a free deal” feature, frequently becoming a trending topic on Twitter when they do a national deal, like the Amazon gift certificate deal.  Deals have become a form of “social currency”, often leading people down the path to purchase when they discover a great offer that their friend promoted though social media.  One of the reasons that Twitter has emerged as an effective tool for convert is the “factor”.  When I hear about a deal on Living Social through Twitter, it is coming from a person that I follow and I follow them because I either know them or respect what they have to say, further indicating that this filter is a powerful tool in driving people to convert to purchase.  On the flip side, Twitter’s role as a massive driver of purchases will depend on it further attracting mainstream users, while also recognizing the uniqueness of commerce.  F-Commerce (Facebook commerce) has emerged as a real trend because of the massive share of mainstream users on the platform and high frequency of usage among those users.

What does it all mean?

In many ways, Twitter is at a tipping point when it comes to adaption by brands as a core marketing tool.  As outlined above, Twitter has the potential to be an effective tool for Acquire, Engage and Convert.  However, many brands today are still in experimentation mode with the platform, realizing they need to be there but not knowing best practices for leveraging it fully.  How Twitter engages, educates and ultimately monetizes these brands will make all the difference.

The folks at Get Satisfaction released a simple but telling infographic that shows the top reasons people follow brands online.  You can click through for the full infographic, which covers things like:

• How many brands do people follow on Facebook?
• What happens when people follow a brand?