Linda's Marketing Leverage Blog

Linda Popky joins the Million Dollar Consultant® Hall of Fame

Right on the heels of this week's San Jose/Silicon Valley Business Journal's Top Women of Influence in Silicon Valley award,  I learned on Friday that I have been inducted into Alan Weiss's Million Dollar Consultant Hall of Fame.

According to Alan, the criteria for induction include:

• Serving as an exemplar to others in the profession.
• The highest levels of integrity, ethics, and accountability.
• Revenue and profit achievement and growth.
• Contributions of intellectual capital to the profession.
• Continual, challenging, personal and professional development.
• Risk taking and resilience.

This award is shared with only the top leaders in consulting worldwide. This year's seven inductees, Suzanne Bates, Seth Kahan, Pat Lynch, Katherine Radeka, Scott Simmonds, Phil Symchych and me, join 13 other existing members of the Hall of Fame. I am the only member with a focus on strategic marketing consulting.

It really is a privilege to be  recognized by Alan Weiss, the man who has written more books on consulting than anyone in the world and who has been called "one of the most highly regarded independent consultants in America." Furthermore, it is an honor to be associated with the 19 other top professionals who share this distinction.

Thanks to my family, friends, colleagues and clients who have helped me get to this level.

Linda

We're Honored: Silicon Valley Top 100 Women of Influence Award

The Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal has named Linda Popky one of Silicon Valley's "Top 100 Women of Influence" for 2009.

This year's winners, nominated by their peers, were chosen by a panel of judges that included Shellye Archambeau, CEO of MetricStream; Connie Martinez, CEO of 1stAct Silicon Valley; Ysabel Duron, Latinas Contra Cancer Founder and Executive Director; and Wendy Beecham, CEO of Forum for Women Entrepreneurs and Executives.

According to Business Journal Publisher James MacGregor, “The women listed exemplify many of the attributes that makes Silicon Valley a global leader in business, philanthropy and public policy. The experience and skills these women demonstrate have helped to innovate and shepherd the valley to success."

In addition to being the founder and president of L2M Associates, Linda is also the president of Women in Consulting, a San Francisco Bay Area-based community of over 400 consultants and small business owners working to build strong businesses. A consultant, speaker, author and educator, she is the program advisor for San Francisco State University's Integrated Marketing Program and on the advisory board for UC Santa Cruz Extension's Marketing Management Program.

Women of Influence award winners will be honored at an awards ceremony and dinner to be held at the San Jose Fairmont on March 18th. More information about the event.

Yahoo's New Management Structure: Why Critics Are Missing the Point

Ever since Carol Bartz was announced as the new CEO of Yahoo, I've been watching the reactions with amusement. The "pundits" or web gurus or whatever they call themselves have expressed their skepticism about how someone who comes from a hardware and software background can turn around a web company. Why Carol Bartz? Why not hire someone with direct web experience instead?

Last week's announcement that Elisa Steele will be joining Yahoo as CMO was met with the same response: another person w/a hardware/software background and no direct web experience.

Ladies and gentlemen: You're missing the point.

Yahoo has probably close to 12,000 employees, just about all of whom we can assume know the web inside and out. The place is crawling with web expertise--open a conference room and it probably falls right out at you. Yet all of those people with all of that expertise haven't helped Yahoo get out of the rut they're in. In fact, it may have helped them dig a deeper hole.

What Yahoo needs now is strong leadership, solid management expertise, and the ability to create a strategy and execute effectively. And that's exactly why the hiring of Carol and Elisa is *exactly* what Yahoo needs.

I've had the opportunity to see these two women in action--at Sun, at Autodesk, and at NetApp. Carol is a non-nonsense manager who knows her technology and has great business sense. She isn't afraid to ask tough questions or make hard decisions and she will absolutely tell you what she sees without any hesitation, sugar coating, or concern about being politically correct. What a breath of fresh air.

Elisa is both a seasoned, knowledgeable creative marketing executive and someone who can build and motivate a team with amazing effectiveness. She is one of the best I've ever seen when it comes to executing big, complex marketing initiatives--something that should benefit Yahoo tremendously as it navigates perilous waters and attempts to survive as a standalone company.

Both of these women bring the management skills necessary to harness Yahoo's existing pool of web talent and drive them in the right direction.

One more thing. Let's not forget that the CEO of Yahoo's biggest competitor had no more web experience when he was hired than either Carol or Elisa. But, interestingly, Eric Schmidt did have the same hardware/software background--coming from Sun and Novell. Looks like he hasn't done too badly at Google.

Hmm. Maybe there's a pattern here?

New Podcast: How the Art of Corporate Resilience Impacts Marketing

Our newest interview in the Marketing Thought Leadership podcast series is now live.

Pamela S. Harper of Business Advancement  talks about why corporate resilience is so important in today's economy, and how marketing can play such a pivotal role in driving resilience.

Listen now.

Check out our other recent interviews:

• Ruth Ann Barrett of Earthsayer.tv on The Intersection of Sustainability and Web 2.0
• Lisa Orrell of The Orrell Group on Understanding the GenY Mindset for Increased Productivity and Retention
• Denise Shiffman of Venture Essentials on How to Create Engaging Customer Experience through Social Media

Brand Obama: How Barack Obama Really Won the Presidency

There's been much discussion over the last two weeks of what exactly Barack Obama's campaign team did right to help him win the presidency of the United States.

In their November 17th Business Week column "Three Reasons Obama Won,"  Jack and Suzy Welch focus on lessons business leaders can take from McCain's loss and Obama's win. They make three points which they say business leaders can learn from:

• Start with a clear, consistent vision.
• Execute well.
• Have friends in high places.

While I agree that all three of these are true, they've missed something critical: in a very short time, Obama built a strong, powerful personal brand--basically from scratch.

I teach Branding Strategies at San Francisco State. I ask my students to tell us their favorite brands. We get the usual favorites: Apple, Nike, Target, Trader Joes, Coke, etc. In October, however, several students said their favorite brand was Barack Obama.

How interesting. For the last 18 months, I've had my students evaluate each of the candidates brands, tell me what they stand for and how well they are doing in delivering on their brand promise. This was a fascinating exercise in the early primary season when we had a varied cast of characters from Hillary Clinton to Rudi Guiliani, Mike Hucklebee to Mitt Romney, not to mention McCain and Obama.

In the early days, the candidates were often defined by their demographics (female, African-American, Mormon, ex-POW, divorced Catholic, etc.). But as time went on, it became clear that Barack Obama had done a tremendous job building a strong brand, based on change, hope, inclusion and making a difference for America. He did this using a combination of grass roots efforts, traditional media, and an outstanding use of new media, from websites and blogs to Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, from personalized donation emails to brightly colored logowear that was hot and hard to find.

As opposed to McCain, Obama did this by focusing on the future, on the potential for good, and on the positive--not by knocking the competition, shouting and screaming, or defending the current situation.  In doing so, he created a brand that people were proud to be involved with--a brand that transcended race, ethnicity, gender or age. He created the kind of brand all companies wish they had.

And that, as much as the three reasons the Welchs articulated, is the reason Obama won.

Planting the Seeds of Success

Our article "Planting the Seeds of Success: Why Marketing in a Down Time Helps Business Turn Up" is featured as the guest contributor article for the most recent issue of the CB Software Systems News newsletter, published by tech guru Chad Barr.

Read the article.

Astia Efforts Pay Off

As a coach, mentor and member of the Technology Review Board of Astia, the accelerator for women-led startups, I am really pleased to be able to share this recent news release highlighting the success of companies participating in Astia's most recent entrepreneurial venture conference last fall.

It was my pleasure to work with one of the companies mentioned in the release, Scout Labs,  a web-based service that helps companies tune into the voice of the customer across the web and turns that information into actionable insight to drive business growth.Talk about a great idea in the right place at the right time. And since they were funded right after the Astia conference, obviously other people thought so as well.

If you would like to interact with some of the hottest companies in the market and support a great cause too, I recommend getting involved with Astia in the future. They are always looking for volunteers to share their expertise with the next generation of entrepreneurs.