View from Granville Plaza

The Daily Photo: 4 p.m. A view of the north shore mountains, and cherry blossoms from Granville Plaza. Many thanks to Jack Simpson.

Awards Shows: Are They Worth It?

Branding and marketing industry practitioners like nothing more than a big dinner, and an opportunity to pat each other on the back. There are awards show dinners for advertising campaigns, for specific media, for specific product categories, for marketing plans, and just about every other variant you can imagine. Plus, most of these awards shows come in civic, regional, national and international flavours. Large advertising agencies have full-time staff who do nothing but prepare entries for these things. All of which begs the question – are they worth the cost and the time it takes?

The easy answer is maybe. It depends who’s asking.

Staff at the companies who are victorious get a big rush out of winning awards. It’s great for team morale, and a smart manager will leverage the wins internally to prolong the feeling. These days, with a shaky economy still struggling to remember how to walk upright, a little morale boost from any source is a good thing.

Companies with a great track record of high profile wins attract better talent. The best people want to work for the best firms, and one way to determine who is really good at what they do is by counting up the trophies.

The recognition that awards bring can help build awareness for a company, and perhaps aid in the process of finding new clients and customers. At the very least it doesn’t hurt to have a bit of a fuss made publicly over some really great work.

And finally, there’s a case to be made that awards shows raise the bar; that celebrating the best of the best makes everyone work smarter and try harder in the year ahead.

There are those who disagree with all of the above. This crowd of naysayers base their arguments on a few different platforms. One argument is that awards juries are easily swayed, and that unscrupulous winners create work that is designed to get jury members votes, instead of results that create sales. We’ve all heard the stories of branding companies that strike deals with clients that go like this: “We’ll do this outrageous ad campaign for you for free if you agree to run it once or twice so we can enter the awards shows with it.” That’s not kosher, of course, but I question how often it really happens.

Another point often raised is that the substantial time and resources required to enter these competitions favours the biggest and best-funded companies. According to this line of thought, the little guys don’t have the time or money to enter, so are the awards really indicative of great work or just deep pockets?

So. Good or bad? My opinion is that they are good. The benefits may be soft, and not immediately recognizable on a balance sheet, but worthwhile nonetheless. Today, credibility is king, in any industry, and a few statues and trophies can help everyone feel good about working with, or for, a winner.

Lions Gate Entertainment: Bulk Up or Go Lean?

If we need an illustration of the changing world of media we have to look no farther than the battle between the (vaguely) Vancouver-based film company Lions Gate Entertainment Corp. and activist investor Carl Icahn.

Lions Gate is the little movie company that could, starting out in North Vancouver with a few low-budget films and relentlessly building itself up as a player in the industry. Now largely operating out of Los Angeles, although it's still listed as Canadian based, its successes include television's Mad Men, and film's very lucrative, albeit blood-splattered, Saw franchise (no truth to the rumour that it's spinning out other film franchises named Drill and Chisel).

Icahn is a famous American corporate gadflyr whose modus operandi is to buy a position in a company and then agitate relentlessly to drive the stock price up. This agitation usually involves complaining, about and often subverting, various strategic intitiatives a company makes.

Icahn is currently trying to lift this stake in Lions Gate from 18.9% to 29.9% so that he can have more say in how Lions Gate is being run.

And right now, he wants more say in Lions Gate's ambitions to take over old Hollywood. It's expected (by industry analysts) to be pursuing a couple of biggie movie companies, namely MGM -- the company that had a lot ot do with making Hollywood what it is -- and Miramax, which was big in the latter years of the 20th Century.

Both are rumored to be struggling, victims of a changing media landscape.

Movies on your computer

Like the newspapers and television industries, the film landscape has been thrown into turmoil in the past five years because of the Internet . Moviegoers now have the ability to simply download a film to their laptops instead of lining up in the rain to get into a movie theatre where they have to pay outrageous prices for butter-slathered popcorn.

I don't watch movies on my computer, because I need a larger screen (the eyes are the first to go) but apparently almost everyone under 35 does. The typical movie date has changed from cuddling in the back row of a theatre to cuddling up to the LCD screen in a matchbox-sized apartment.

And that spells trouble for the traditional film industry structure. Like the aforementioned industries, the film industry is being disintermediated by the Internet.

That's what Icahn and Lions Gate are scrapping over.

Lions Gate apparently figures the best strategy to fight this trend is to bulk up. So it's recently bought TV Guide, which has a film business, for $255 million. And now it's circling around traditional film distribution companies like MGM.

Presumably, the idea is that it can extend its low-cost, high-return model to these companies and thus survive in the new world.

Icahn appears to have a different attitude. He's already complaining that Lions Gate paid far too much for TV Guide, and will likely pay too much for MGM or any of the film companies that are currently on the auction block. The solution, he indicates, is to get leaner, not to bulk up.

Is he right? Who knows?

But their argument over strategy will be interesting to watch because it goes right to the heart of change in the media world.

Four Tips for Facebook Marketing

Advertisers know that Facebook users are more engaged than your average channel-flipper: they're checking the site several times a day, and they're using it as their main platform for consuming and producing content.

If you're a consultant or small-business owner, you should be using your personal profile to grow your business (in addition to spying on your kids). Here are a few tips for putting Facebook to more productive use.

Inflate your friend list

You don't have to have a publicly viewable profile in order to get your message out — you just have to have lots and lots of "friends." Don't be shy about connecting with colleagues, acquaintances, and friends-of-friends – the more the merrier. I'll explain why in a bit.

Pimp your profile

There's no point in being modest: you need to let people know what you're all about. Use a flattering, professional picture, and use the text box below to promote what you do. Don't forget to include links to your website or blog.

Buy some ads

It's easy, it's affordable, and it's extremely targeted. Recently, a friend of mine started a Facebook advertising campaign for what you could call a niche service: lifecoaching for pharmacists. While that may sound like an impossibly small demographic, Facebook's sophisticated targeting tools, combined with its overall breadth, meant that she could still reach over 2000 high-quality prospects with one buy. That type of marketing is simply not possible using conventional channels.

Be visible

As I've said before, pumping out content is the single best marketing strategy I know of. Share your blog articles in your news feed, and be sure to "like" and comment on other people's posts. That way, you're more likely to pop up in their feeds as well.

You may not get an immediate response with everything you do. But over time, you will build mindshare. If you're consistently posting plumbing-related articles, your friends will think about you – and refer you – when they or someone they know has a leaky pipe.

OK, so maybe that's not the best example, but you get the idea. By combining the personal with the professional, you can bolster your credibility and expand your reach. Just remember: be yourself, and don't be shy.