On the joys of good information – Premier Partners Forum

Queensland’s Gold Coast is more usually associated with sun and surf than economics, commercial strategy and the commercial implications of social media. But when Patrick Howard joined Fuji Xerox’ Premier Partners at a Thought Leadership Forum last week, he discovered a rich vein of knowledge and ‘crunchy’ intelligent information.

Jason Redenbach clearly loves Nelson Mandela. Every good yarn from the security specialist who trained the South African president’s bodyguards is about what a great guy Mandela is. The revered statesman has a special people touch, likes to single out individuals and takes care of people. Or so Redenbach tells it.
He (Redenbach not Mandela) was the celebrity speaker at the opening dinner of the Fuji Xerox’ Premier Partners Thought Leadership Forum at the Sofitel on the Gold Coast last Wednesday. Lean and trim with the hard look about him that let you know that beneath his professional motivational speaker charm, here was a guy who could break your arm or your neck in a split second.
It wasn’t an easy audience either. Premier Partners are a bunch of the top end Fuji Xerox customers who run 30 or 40 of the largest digital printing companies in the region. They’d flown in for a one-day forum and were expecting the usual conference blather. These guys have been around the world with Fuji Xerox, they know their own worth to the company and are not easily impressed.

(PIctured above: Michael Durie, Australia Post who was MC, Suzanne Myerson, Fuji Xerox, who organised the whole event and Mac Elsayeh, Fuji Xerox  marketing support director, the presiding genius behind the Premier Partners in the region.)

I was pretty impressed by Redenbach, I will say, but then I’m the guy who reckons Nelson Mandela and Bob Dylan define the era we live in, so anyone who thinks highly of the main man who saved South Africa from a bloodbath is OK by me.
Redenbach won over the crowd, especially with his physical demonstration of how action always beats reaction. Maybe we should have taken him a little more seriously but by then we were finishing off a good dinner with Mojo wines.

King of the Docutech
There was one invited guest speaker before him … Frank Steenburg, (pictured) the Xerox veteran director who championed the introduction of the Docutech. Lean and sparse as only retired Americans can look, he’s anything but inactive since he left the company. He is now the marketing guru for web-to-print digital printer ColorCentric Corp in the States. He had the Partners almost salivating with tales of how the company processes millions of digitally printed photo albums over the web. Great to see someone easily move ahead of the game, at an age when many are becoming ever more resistant to change.
After that, it was an early night for me … talk about aging. Some of the guys ended up eating kebabs in the night, but you had to be there.

Good information is hard to come by
  The Premier Partners assembled the following morning, some a little worse for wear, plus one rep from the media … yours truly.
After a short welcome speech by mine host, Nick Kugenthiran, Fuji Xerox Australia, managing director, Michael Durie introduced the first speaker, Saul Estlake (pictured). You’d recognise Saul if you saw him. He’s the bloke they bring on television whenever they want statements of suitable gravitas on the economy. Former chief economist for ANZ and now on the speakers’ circuit he was, as far as I’m concerned, unpromising material to be sitting indoors for on the Gold Coast.
Economics is known as the dismal science. Economists quickly learn that the only time people take them seriously is when they are forecasting gloom and disaster. But Saul was good value, excellent value in fact.
You have to respect someone who at the very start of their presentation admits that they, along with almost everyone else in the profession, didn’t see the GFC coming. Then, over the course of an hour and a half, he took us through the genesis and history of the recent economic unpleasantness. His use of GFC was the closest he came to using jargon throughout. For an economist it must be a first.
In a staid, slightly ironic manner, he identified the culprits (greedy merchant bankers) the methods (collateral debt obligations) and the results (massive, unsustainable government debt) of the GFC.
You don’t look to an economist for advice on how to run your business and Saul wasn’t in that market. While he reckons the worst is over in Australia and New Zealand, the rest of the world is heading into some really difficult times as governments raise taxes and slash expenditure to reduce debt. He did finish up by saying that; “You would still rather be running a business in Australia and New Zealand than almost anywhere else in the world.”
He was quite simply the best economic speaker I’ve ever heard. On his own, well worth the trip. He summarised the points thus:

• The worst of the downturn is past. The cyclical advertising contraction has troughed. One of the ongoing results is that we’re going to have to deal more with the government as a customer.
• There will be more competition from overseas due to the strong Australian dollar. Developing countries will continue to improve their technology and their ability to compete.
• There will be higher energy costs.
• The cost of money will also rise. The big four banks are facing less competition and so will be able to insist on higher security rates for any loans they make.
• The Henry review of the tax system is likely to call for significant changes in employment and company taxes.

 

90 percent unconscious
Moving right along, the second speaker was Jeanette Maw McMurtry (pictured) from Boulder, Colorado, a pert and sparky direct marketing presenter. With her proposition that 90 percent of our thinking is unconscious I felt like she was talking straight to me. I publish DIRECT, a DM magazine, so Ms McMurtry’s call to personalise campaigns was of particular interest. Her call is to change your unique selling proposition (USP) to an emotional selling proposition (ESP) if you want to connect with the 90 percent of consumers’ mind they know nothing about.
She had some hard truths for anyone relying on the loyalty of their customers, saying 52 percent of the customers of major brands change every year. She also said we’re all programmed by the avoidance of pain and the pursuit of pleasure. I hate those reductionary takes on the human condition, even if I recognise their truth.
But McMurtry’s message for the Premier Partners was plain; personalisation pays … so get into it.

Strategy after lunch
If you are going to be told about strategy then hearing it from a professor from Macquarie School of Management is as good as it gets. Dr Robin Stonecash (pictured below with Nick Kugenthiran) had a difficult gig. Strategy is one of those subjects we all recognise should be done and occasionally we sit down to plan it out. But that’s where it stops. Strategy is the big picture, the long-term result while we’re pre-occupied with dealing with the alligators in the swamp.
Maybe it was the lunch, or perhaps information overload, or I’m just not that bright but I didn’t get too much from her discussion of behavioural economics, the decision tree and true ambiguity. But she was the presenter that got most audience engagement. Lots of questions. The one I didn’t get to ask was… is the ability to think strategically a talent or can it be developed? Should we all have a strategist on the team?

Herding with the naturals
Final speaker of the day was a very cool frude, Mike Walsh, (pictured below) who works out of Hong Kong and studies online behaviour. Talk about cutting edge. He told us about social media, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, SMS, and even emails.
He had this great time line for the generation he termed, the Naturals. These are the kids born in 1994, the year the first web browser was created. They are coming of age in 2012, never having lived in a world without the internet. The Naturals are the future and anyone with ambitions to remain in the communication business better be able to talk to them.
So you will have to Connect, which is mainly through social networks. Peer reviews are now the way people know to pay attention. It’s how we discover brands that matter or suit.
Then there’s the Herd; have you got one? It’s the group that follow you and it may be on Twitter or Facebook or LinkedIn. In a business sense they are your loyal customers. You have to take care of them and their trust.
It comes down to using all the channels available, the whole 360 degrees. Marketing communications is a multi-channel expertise in a social networked world. He gave Zappos.com as a fine example of how to break boundaries. Who would have thought you could buy shoes over the net? But you can, with a 365-day return policy and millions of shoes to choose from.
Just to finish off he gave a virtuoso demonstration of how to use video on your web site. It’s a visual world and he was astounded that only one printer in the world – one printer! - had made an YouTube video about his processes. Naturally the company was swamped with visits, which must have turned into orders.
It was a great talk and left us all feeling up to speed with the social networking world.

And so we say farewell
  Then we were out of there, flying back from the Queensland sunshine to rainy Melbourne and Sydney. Downstairs in the hotel Brett Maishman from Fuji Xerox, was playing host to Club 100. These are commercial printers, many of them FX customers but not all. They were getting a similar information download to us, also staying overnight.
It’s a good way to do it, overnight is as much as most of us want to be away for a conference. But the main point of it was the quality. I hate going to conferences and being talked down to. Lots of times I know more than the people on the stage and I sit there silently critiquing their understanding.
Not this time. This was good stuff, challenging, intelligent and relevant. Then there’s the networking. Nice to have a beer at Coolangatta airport with ‘Jonesy’ of CDM.

(Pictured at Coolangatta airport : Premier Partners, John Budgen, Snap Sydney CBD; Rob Shaw Kwik Kopy Pitt Street; and Mike Jones, CDM.)

Industry suppliers take note; Fuji Xerox knows how to look after its Premier Partners… and they appreciate it.