AUTHOR OF THE MONTH
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 In his book What Really Counts for CEOs, Gal Borenstein, founder and CEO of the Washington, D.C. integrated marketing communications firm The Borenstein Group, teaches CEOs how to make a science out of their marketing and quickly discern What Really Counts. We spoke with Gal about his excellent book.
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- Please describe your experience in the strategic communications field of Business-to-Business companies.
I’m a recognized expert in strategic communications, branding, marketing, advertising and public relations for Business-to-Business companies. As the founder and CEO of The Borenstein Group, an integrated marketing communications firm in the Washington DC metropolitan area, I’ve helped hundreds of startups, early-stage, growing and mature companies and their owners and senior management recalibrate their brand promise to the market and build value added valuation to their perceived position, pricing, technology or services in their respective marketplace. The Borenstein Group has been consistently ranked among Advertising Age’s Top 500 advertising agencies in the nation and is known for its slogan “Making Creativity a Science.”
I have over 20 years of global technology marketing and communications experience and have been involved in the dissemination or development of more than 100 business brands. These include national brands such as Learning Tree International, Marconi, Nextel, Dominion Telecom, Airbus North America, as well as mid-sized and emerging-growth vertical market leaders such as CR Software (Collections), ExMeritus Software (Information Security), Freedom Bank of Virginia (Business Banking), ATSC (Government Systems Integration), and many more. From traditional marketing collateral to leading-edge Customer Relationship Management systems to Web 2.0 social networking applications, I’m privileged to have seen what works and what doesn’t, firsthand.
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- What do you consider your most successful public relations endeavor to date?
I’d had my own company for five years when the Washington Business Journal asked to do a piece on me. I was, of course, delighted. This was the kind of exposure you’d typically have to buy. Here it was being offered to me on a platter. I thought the interview went well but as the meeting ended the journalist asked for a photograph to accompany the article, something that would make a statement about me and how I envisioned what the Borenstein Group brought to the table of traditional marketing. I gave her request not a moment’s thought. I asked the photographer to get out her camera, then said, “How’s this?” as I stood on my head in the hallway. The subsequent article was all I could hope for and that picture appeared prominently beside it.
This photograph was symbolic of my career. It seems to me that since I launched my own company I’ve been standing the industry on its head, attempting to humbly but passionately teaching CEO’s to examine how their company is sold and helping them to present it to their customers in new, innovative ways. I wanted to convey to the CEO’s with whom I might work that they should, figuratively, stand on their heads when considering the performance of their marketing and sales departments.
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- How do you keep abreast of trends and issues in the marketing and sales field?
I am an avid reader of three keep marketing and sales media resources:
1. Btob magazine- www.btobonline.com – everything you need to know about cutting-edge trends, summary of successes and failures in the marketing and sales industry.
2. Marketing Sherpa- an insightful online portal (www.marketingsherpa.com ) that shares best practices and case studies of successful marketers. Lots of great thought leadership materials as well as statistics that are otherwise hard to obtain.
3. CMO Council- The Chief Marketing Officer Council is my ultimate go-to place for identifying what Fortune-size strategies work and which do not. They publish numerous strategic studies that show strategic trends in everything from retaining customers to growing new niches. (www.cmocouncil.org)
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- How have you helped develop a strong image of your group and firm in the business community?
1. Creating intellectual properties that are not self-serving and create thought leadership within my targeted communities of interest. Unlike many of my peers, I am more interested in my client’s vertical markets then my own collegial community, as they aren’t the one that pay the bills.
2. Web & Internet: Since the pre-historic pre-browser era of the Internet all the way to Twitter and web 2.0, I have used the notion of creating niche markets to separate the image of my firm from the rest of the sheep. It served us well as it allowed us to jump out of the matrix. We use everything from our web site, to blogs, to public relations, to business networking as opportunities to create a strong image.
3. Direct Marketing: Most marketers believe that direct marketing is ineffective because of the low response rates it is getting. I beg to differ. It is what you say and how you say it. For example. For five years, The Borenstein Group has been sending a pair of full-size red boxing gloves with a message ‘Get Results with a Punch’. Five years later, I still walk into offices of prospects that moved sometimes two or three companies, and they still remember who we are.
4. First Impression in New Business: I have a rule that we follow: I don’t care as much whether we win or lose a presentation for new business. I care that the people that we’ve met have a very stronger impression of who we are, what we are and what we’re not. Winning at the cost of losing your soul is a recipe for disaster in long-term growth. After 15 years in business, it has proven to be my successful M.O almost always. Never compromise who you are.
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- Has it been a struggle to mold your staff into a champion team with a unified spirit and achievable goals?
Yes, and it never stops being a struggle by definition. The easy part for me was to articulate the mission of our unique value proposition “making creativity a science” as it was reactionary to what I experienced in our industry. The challenging part is to help new employees who have ‘trained’ by corporate America to think inside the box, mind their own business and never disagree, open up their minds that you can succeed if you actually listen, challenge authority, and empower fresh thinking. So in many respects, I keep the ‘struggle’ alive, as it keeps me, as a CEO, awake!
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- How must a leader define his company's vision?
A clear vision should articulate in what way the journey to a corporate destination is unique and different than anyone else. It should inspire the team to ‘get there’ in a way that is exciting, realistic, and involves hard work. Often, I see company visions resemble delusions of grandeur leaving very little room to accomplish what the founders meant.
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- What in your opinion is the greatest challenge facing the CEOs of the present age?
Today’s CEO is surrounded by either too much data that isn’t meaningful and actionable or no useful information whatsoever. For example, corporations buy CRM systems that produce statistics but most of them aren’t meaningful or usable in a way that contributes to the company’s bottom line. I find it incredible that when I ask most CEOs what are their key performance indicators for their marketing and branding success, they can only have a ‘feeling’ or a ‘gut check’ as oppose to empirical evidence. Today’s CEO must embrace the concept that keeping up with the Joneses and doing what the competition does will surely drive him or her out of business. There is an old saying on the value in selling technology: “where there is mystery, there is margin”; not so when it comes to understanding your marketing: ‘where there is mystery, there is your early demise’.
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- In today's increasingly technologically-dependent society, do you think a company can still create a strong customer experience without making use of technology in its design and/or strategy?
A company that depends on technology to create a stronger customer experience in its design or strategy misunderstands or misuses the human condition of its customers. Its about psychology, not automation. If you cannot visualize the face of your customer and apply psychological application to solve their basic needs, your latest and greatest customer support technology is more likely to automate problems. Technology is a tool. Never the solution when it comes to design and strategy of marketing. Consider this: Amazon is a technology-driven company, but its success is due to deep understanding of their customer psychological profile. The medium is NEVER THE MESSAGE.
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- What moved you to come up with this book?
Let’s face it: there are many marketing, advertising, and management consulting books and guides out there. Any one of them potentially provides the wisdom and knowledge that you seek. As the owner of an integrated marketing communications agency, The Borenstein Group, I wrote this book because I experience almost every day, a fundamental disconnect between how my loving industry peers think about “marketing,” and how you, the CEO, think about it.
In other words, what occurred to me over the past 20 years of practicing the art and science of marketing is that the challenges of the CEO aren’t theoretical and cannot be contained in any one formula, study, or association report. It’s a psychological condition whereby he or she is forced to search for impact and effectiveness in a relative and inaccurate world.
I wrote this book to help you, the CEO, gain an outside-in perspective on how to ask better questions that motivate and compel your company to get better answers. By no means do I assert that my recommendations will work best for your company. In fact, in the course of writing this book, I have interacted with marketing industry professionals, marketing directors, and CEOs who reject most of my assertions. I welcome it. For too long, we have accepted Best Practices without a true and honest examination. Believe me, I once drank the Kool-Aid and was a willing participant as a service provider.
But if I cause you to reconsider a convention and find it is a fallacy, I have accomplished what I set out to do: challenging you to challenge conventional beliefs of “What Really Counts.”
~ o ~ - Any parting message/s for your readers?
I wrote this book at an eye-level for CEOs because I believe no one seems to be honest enough to tell the truth without fear of retribution. I passionately believe that CEOs should be asking better questions to get their marketing and sales force to serve their mission. This book should open the door for you to:
1. Deconstruct, redefine and optimize your Marketing Return on Investment.
2. Understand the “Sales & Marketing Disconnect” and How to Fix it.
3. Take charge of their marketing to regain control of your company’s ROI.
4. Reinvent their ‘marketing spend’ to realign with Web 2.0 and Digital Marketing.
I would like to encourage readers who are interested to contact me with any questions or business challenges in their business, at Gal@Borensteingroup.com or at 703-385-8178x205.
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