Relevant, useful, interesting… even entertaining copy is no longer enough to hold the interest of harried, starved for time, inundated with information business prospects. I’ve spent a lot of time and effort researching and building a process to develop multimedia storyboards that can deliver a significant amount of information in a short amount of time. The idea is to use sight and sound simultaneously to compress the amount of time, and increase the ease, in which information is communicated.

You’re thinking, “Wow, Bob. Alert the media. Ever hear of television or the movies?”

This process might include video, but it doesn’t have to, and it’s designed to be deliverable at less cost, with less equipment, and less prep time than video. It’s designed to fit the budgets of my clients. It’s untried, though.

So, I’ve been thinking about how to launch it. I first vetted the idea with friends, colleagues and clients over the holidays. Then I submitted discussions to a half dozen groups on LinkedIn. I was surprised at the response. Many smart, talented, creative professionals joined in the discussions. The consensus was, if I can pull it off, it’s a winner.

Then I went to three online custom publishers I have a relationship with. They were positive. They all said the same thing, they can sell it, IF I can pull it off. So now it’s time to develop a proof of concept and get feedback.

I’ve built a prototype with a voice over script, some on screen text, and a story told in cartoon format (with my crude stick figure drawings). I realized I needed a professional cartoonist to do the eight or nine frames necessary to tell the visual part of the story. So I’m using iFreelance and contacting other cartoonists I found on LinkedIn and through graphic designers I know.

So stay tuned. I’m going to blog about the process as I reveal the proof of concept online, try to build buzz via social media, and crowdsource tweaks to the process/product to improve it. By the way, one of the outcomes of the discussions on LinkedIn is a name for the product: acStream.

Should be interesting.

Marketing
The 00’ decade began the transition to the mantra “marketing is the enterprise.” In the 10’ decade, marketing will be the most important factor in business success. No offense to sales-driven companies, but marketing is the central nervous system of the enterprise in the new decade. And, the cardiovascular system is communications. The marketing strategy is now all about the experience. Customers live in a digitally connected world at home, in the car, on the bus, at work, even at their kid’s soccer games. Brands who give their customers opportunities to experience their value proposition will win loyalty. Some B2B brands that do this already include Cisco, Indium Corp. and HubSpot. The secret sauce to creating an experience is to experiment with different communications that touch people through more than one sense including sight, sound, smell, taste, touch. Yes, even B2B brands can do this.

I’m not so sure about smell, taste and touch; but it’s apparent that multimedia (graphics, images, and sounds along with short bits of text) will increasingly become the lingua franca of the web. As for Marketing’s ascendancy, I think most everybody in the business world realizes that ‘order taker’ salespeople have been disintermediated by the internet. But for complex B2B products and services, sales people are still very much needed. Their roles, though, should be upgraded and focused. ‘Beating the bushes’, ‘cold calling’, ‘hunting’… whatever you call it, is less and less effective. Marketing’s role is growing through the addition of what I call ’sales enablement’ activities. These are primarily online pull tactics (including inbound marketing, content marketing, SEO and social media). The upside for professional B2B sales executives is that they get to focus their time and attention on building relationships and closing profitable deals.

You can read the rest of Bernie’s Predictions here.