Client News: EnCorps Begins Recruiting Great Minds for 2010

Stage Two is proud to help promote the 2010 recruiting season of EnCorps.

EnCorps is a San Francisco based non-profit that  recruits retiring engineers, scientists and technology experts to become math and science teachers in California’s under-resourced public schools state wide. Today they begin recruiting great minds to begin teaching as soon as the fall of 2010.

With math science test scores faltering in a state that is known for technological innovation,  EnCorps taps  the knowledge of experienced math and science professionals to teach a new generation. In 2009, EnCorps attracted over 1,100 applicants and recruited over 100 math and science professionals. The organization plans to recruit 200 new teachers for fall of 2010.

Doing outreach for EnCorps we got to know the stories of some of the amazing EnCorps recruits. One such recruit is Sharon White. Sharon grew up in Compton California, a notoriously rough Los Angeles neighborhood. After graduating college, she went on to work for Boeing for thirty years in a variety of fields including finance and engineering. As she headed towards retirement, Sharon realized she wanted to leave a positive legacy in her neighborhood.  She knew her success was because of those who had supported and encouraged her when she was young and she wanted to “pay forward” her gratitude. Sharon enrolled in EnCorps and is now a full time Math teacher at Locke High School in LA.

EnCorps recruits have many stories like this to tell. Some are teachers. Some on the path to become teachers all have encouraged by EnCorps to give back to their communities.
If you or someone you know has been thinking about teaching, check out the EnCorps site.

Full disclosure: EnCorps is a not-for-profit organization and a pro bono client of Stage Two.

The Age of Complex Marketing

It’s no secret that over the last fifteen years or so, marketing has become increasingly complicated as more and more channels and levels of interaction have been introduced by the Internet. In fact, though the basic backbone of principles for reaching customers has remained, marketing itself has evolved into an entirely different, more intelligent, more demanding beast than it was a mere 20 years ago.

Marketing professionals now have more to do than they ever did before, more frequently, and with less preparation time. The upside is that marketers can now engage with customers much more directly and on a wider scale, but this new power comes at the expense of time, energy and requires a supreme understanding of each new nuanced tool the Internet provides.

20 years ago if you wanted to keep your brand current and in the minds of your customers you:

• Had a billboard
• Updated your brochure only when your product changed (which wasn’t very often)
• Had print, radio and TV spots that could last for months or even years.
• If you were really adventurous you sent out a newsletter every few months.

10 years ago you:

• Had a website that functioned statically, much like an online billboard with a bit more information about your company.
• Had to consider how much online vs print exposure you should have
• Sent out email as well as paper newsletters
• Faxed stuff (maybe – we’re still not sure about this whole “fax” thing)

5 years ago you:

• Started (or considered) a blog to go along with your website and started updating once every few days.
• Listed yourself on Yelp/Craigslist/LinkedIN/etc
• Began looking into SEO and wondered if social networking sites could help you get the word out about your product.
• Oh, and you didn’t get to stop sending out newsletters or advertising in the paper or having a billboard, you still had to worry about all those things too. But definitely no more faxing.

Today you must:

• Manage a Facebook page along with perhaps several other profiles, all the while wondering if there is a better way to leverage these sites
• Update your blog regularly with compelling content as well as immediately respond to news in your industry that affects your consumers
• Post on Twitter about that latest blog entry and all the news about your product, and gain a Twitter following and monitor Twitter for mentions of your brand
• Keep up on SEO, optimize SEM
• Send that newsletter and analyze the engagement it yields
• Get that iPhone app up
• Monitor your Google alerts
• Make that widget…
• and you can’t forget about you Yelp reputation and all your traditional advertising.

But beyond the sheer amount of work required to keep up with all these new channels and platforms, there are marketing challenges that occur in the dynamic of the information age. For instance, how do you stand out from all the noise? How do you compete with so much other information, some of it from your competitors, for user attention? Consumers today see more advertisements, receive more messages, juggle so much more information than they ever have before. This kind of environment demands that your product the memorable, sticky and relevant or it will be lost to the ever flowing current of noise.

Also, not all engagement with your target is equal. How do you determine the value of engagement in the interactive space? For some companies, having aFacebook page with a hundred fans measures a high level of engagement with the brand. For others this a formality at best. The same questions arise from all other social media environments. What is the value of a follower on Twitter? Or the power of a positive tweet by satisfied customer? How much interaction with an app is enough to make a lasting impression?

All the free tools the Internet offers do not create a strategy, an experienced marketing professional does.  All the different types of engagement does not bring you a string of customers, but learning from that engagement can. Blogging does not create an audience, but positioning and messaging can. Now more than ever, companies need a team of professionals that can guide them through the crowded media landscape and make sure they stand out.

A Floating Embargo for a Moving Target

By now we have all heard the horror stories of developers waiting for the iPhone App store to give approval for their apps.  Apple’s basic philosophy in approving apps seems to be “we’ll get to it when we get to it.” The same applies to app updates, leaving many a developer and their users stranded like a cat on a raft for weeks.

So, then, how do you promote an iPhone app release when you can’t know when an app will go live in the store? There are a few strategies:

1.) Make a firm embargo. You will get an email from Apple when your app is ready, and you have the option to take it down, out of the app store.  As soon as your app is approved, yank it down, and then start your outreach with a firm embargo specified for the press.  This makes for a level playing field, since everyone knows when the story is a go.  However, Apple still doesn’t give you a specific time when your app will reappear.  This means that even though you specify “Tuesday at 9AM PST” for the embargo, the app might not reappear precisely at 9AM Tuesday.  This will result in fewer people being able to download the app spontaneously, right after reading about the cool new thing.

And there’s a worse possibility too. The app could appear at 7AM instead of 9AM. This means that any press watching the app store have no reason to hold the embargo any longer, since it’s now in the public domain.  And once someone breaks embargo, it’s anyone’s guess who will still cover. Strategies on how best to communicate and manage a broken embargo are best left for another post.

Option #1 will probably secure more press coverage, but you risk most of the readers not having the opportunity to download the app. You get buzz, but a lower buzz to download ratio.

2.) Give a “floating” embargo. Pitch your story while awaiting approval, but ask the bloggers not to go live with a story until they get the signal from you that the app is up. This strategy avoids missing downloads from eager readers, but selling the concept might be difficult. Even if you get an agreement, there is the risk of a blogger breaking the embargo causing other blogs to forego the story. Also, some writers require editor approval; editors who may frown on a floating embargo. Not to mention a blogger could forget about your story in the swell of other stories between your pitch and the app going live. They are busy people, after all.

The floating embargo is tricky, especially if you’re pitching writers with whom you don’t have a trust relationship.  So far, we have gotten a positive response from a few bloggers to a floating embargo, but these are writers we know well and who rely on us to dish them good news and maintain fair embargoes (in so far as we can control them).

If buzz is your biggest goal, a firm embargo is your best shot, as you are likely to get more publications on board. If you are going for more downloads, you need to make sure your app is ready to go, in which case a floating embargo might be worth the chance. Your strategy will be determined by the type of app you are promoting, how much buzz you’ve already gotten and who your contacts are.