Guest Post by Jim Joseph, President of Cohn & Wolfe North America.
In 25 years as a marketing and branding expert, Jim has created brand experiences for Kellogg’s, Kraft, Ikea, Cadillac, Clean & Clear, American Express, Walmart and more. He teaches intensive marketing classes at New York University and his second book, The Experience Effect for Small Businesses, is in stores now.
This week, Jim is hosting our Small Biz Brand Boot Camp Webinar.
This Wednesday, I’m conducting a one-hour Small Business Bootcamp webinar produced and sponsored by Vocus. The word “bootcamp” is accurate because in one hour I’m attempting to cover what took over 200 pages to write in my new book and 16 hours of class work to teach in my class at NYU.
I’m excited because in honor of the launch of my second book, The Experience Effect for Small Business, my friends at Vocus are bringing the content to their friends!
I never fancied myself a writer. Never considered myself good at it. In fact, my early months at my first marketing job at Johnson & Johnson were all about honing my writing skills, which were sorely lacking. So who would have thought I’d write a book… let alone a second book!
But it was in the process of writing my first book (The Experience Effect) that I found my voice, and that’s why I also started writing my own blog. When the first book was launched, I missed that process of writing so I took to crafting a daily message and hence “What’s Your Experience” was born.
Click here to order Jim's book!
Something very interesting happened along the way that I never would have expected. People started asking me, at speaking engagements and over social media, how to apply the concepts in the book to their small business. Small business? I’m a big brand kind of guy!
Many people said to me, “But I’m not a brand, I just have my own business.” Obviously I quickly corrected them on the brand part. We are each our own brand, whether we say it out loud or not.
So it came over me… small business owners don’t generally have the marketing training that comes with starting out at the big consumer products companies. Like at Johnson & Johnson where I started and got a lot of learning under my belt. I had amazing mentors that showed me the ropes, every step of the way. Small business owners do not typically have that luxury.
As we look to recover from our continued economic mess, it’s likely to be the entrepreneurial spirit and small business that will re-shape our economy. So I decided to translate all that I have learned in big brand theory into small business marketing. I decided to write a second book all about how to create an incredible brand experience if you are a small business owner: The Experience Effect for Small Business.
The principles really are the same across all sizes of brands. Sure, the budgets and the team resources are vastly different … but what seems obvious to so many of us in big brand marketing is totally new territory for most small business owners. I hope that my perspective helps … entrepreneurs are the key to our future, and I consider myself one as well.
The Holmes Report ran an excerpt from my book if you’d like to take a peek, or you can take a longer look at it on Amazon. In any event, I have immensely enjoyed the writing process again and am already working on my next book: personal branding via The Personal Experience Effect.
I sincerely hope you can join us for an intense look at small business marketing during my one hour Small Business Bootcamp with Vocus on April 25th at 2:00pm EST.
Click here to join the One-Hour Small Biz Brand Bootcamp!
Send me a tweet @JimJosephExp so that I’ll know you’re out there.
What’s your experience?
Jim.