Given the short week, Vantage Points is taking the week off as far as new posts are concerned. Stealing a page (and a title) from our friends in the TV and radio businesses, we are digging into the archives for some of our favorite undiscovered  posts:

Rebuilding the way we look at Green Building: Most people assume green building is expensive. An interesting post about a recent study published by Good Energies, a global energy efficiency and renewable energy investment company, shows some surprising conclusions about green building costs…

Millionaire Cat – Marketing Promotion Hits the Litter Box: Channel surfing last night, I came across Meow Mix Think Like a Cat Game Showwhich purported to be the first game show in which “catestants” (I did not make that one up) and their owners compete as a team for $1 million….

A Global PR Perspective: Differences in China and the United States: High tech companies are eager to enter the Chinese market for its endless opportunities, and successful PR will help them to engage the local markets….

It begins with energy…: Green building in particular is thriving in America right now.  Michael Kanellos of Greentech Media said it best yesterday, “For green building companies, the good times have just begun.”…. 

We hope you enjoy these posts and will be back with fresh ones next week. Have a great holiday weekend and stay cool!

Prime time television is full of makeover shows which feature people who are totally clueless about how they appear to others. Yet, businesses also do not take a sober look in the mirror and see how their customers perceive them.

Rich Tehrani of TMCNet.com recently wrote a brilliant blog post that is built around a very simple question: “In This Recession, Would You Buy From Your Company?”  According to Tehrani, businesses need to “put yourself in the customer’s position. Do you think they want to buy from companies they aren’t familiar with and those who do not invest in their customers? No – they don’t… If you think just wining and dining decision-makers is enough to win the business, you are wrong.”

On the makeover shows, before the intervention,  people think that others somehow will see the  ”inner beauty” that lies beneath a slovenly mess. Similarly,  in tough times, tech companies think that their products will sell themselves because customers will  see their underlying engineering brilliance. So when money gets tight, they cut their marketing, and stop communicating their successes to their customers. The result is that these companies are not making their best cases at the time when their customers are making decisions about what needs to be to cut.

I am not just making this point to carry the flag for marketing in a tough time. Fortunately,  when the economy started changing at the end of 2007, the Vantage team did take a hard look at how we were perceived by our customers. We saw room for improvement. So, we re-branded the company. To highlight our thought leadership, we started this blog. We now regularly communicate our successes with press releases on new clients and practice areas. We are becoming leaders in social media such as on Twitter and Facebook. These actions led to an extremely successful 2008, and positions us well for 2009.

At the end of the post, Tehrani provides some very important advice: “Ask yourself this question – are you spending your dollars as wisely as you can? What are your goals and are you altering them to suit a rapidly changing economy?…Yes, now is the time for prudence and now is the time to cut unnecessary expenses. But remember – be careful where you cut from – after all, your customers are trying to find a reason to cut you.”

Like on the makeover shows, your business may need some outside unbiased assistance to improve its appearance. If you need help to answer the tough questions that Rich raises at this critical time, please do not hesitate to contact me at radler [at] pr-vantage.com.  There are no obligations or strings attached. So what’s the benefit to Vantage? We get to make a connection with a group of companies that know they need a change and that are more likely to succeed over the long term.  As we have been in business for 20 years, this is the company we like to keep.