Jay Sachetti joined Jeff O’Brien, partner at Husch Blackwell and Dyanne Ross-Hanson, president of Exit Planning Strategies talked about the market for mergers and acquisitions, exit planning opportunities for companies that don’t end up for sale and how companies can maximize their eventual sale price during an early October panel at the first Upsize on Tap event at Summit Brewing Co. in St. Paul.
When the state Legislature passed a law requiring employers to provide paid leave and safe time for employees, Justin Bieganek started hearing differing details from friends, colleagues and peers.
On his way to speak at Trend Agenda 2004 on the coldest day of the year, Brian Collins traveled past a time-and-temperature clock on Hennepin Avenue. “They’d replaced it with a big witch’s tit,” Collins said, thus kicking off an event at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis that organizers said offered a “wide view of the extraordinary changes we’re undergoing today.”
Ah, profanity. You just don’t hear it that much any more at local business events. (The Informer would like to note that she’s just reporting what she heard, AND she warned people in the headline.) But Collins, who runs the Brand Integration Group at Ogilvy & Mather ad agency in New York City, used it to good effect in his lively talk about creating invincible brands.
“A brand is a promise made consistently over time,” he said. “When the promise is supported by performance a brand thrives.”
“Close your eyes,” Collins exhorted, and go back, back, “all the way back” to 1744. “You’re on the deck of a magnificent Spanish galleon, sailing the Caribbean. The sky is bright blue. You look out and see another ship. You pull out a telescope, and you see…you see someone holding a skull-and-crossbones flag!”
Collins unfurled a huge pirates’ flag of his own: “This is a brand promise, and the brand promise is you’re fucked,” he said, to roars from the audience.
He continued to praise the pirates’ branding skills. “Everything that was promised, they delivered. This promise was so consistently delivered that they’d unfurl their flag and ships would drop their cargo and flee,” Collins said. “That’s what great branding should do.”
Collins believes that most messages we see are contradictory. He showed a lit-up neon sign for DANAL’S grocery store, with the ‘D’ and ‘S’ burnt out, of course. He showed the view from the top of a slide in a playground. At the bottom was a small graveyard. (For more fun and real shots like these, check out www.thisisbroken.com.)
“The stories that we have to live with every day, they’re confusing, so brands have an opportunity to get to clarity,” Collins said. “In my mind branding is about telling an understandable story, a unique story, a memorable story. Tell your own true story.”
Bonus: Attendees were marketing people, so the crowd looked fabulous, although one presenter wore a sleeveless top even though it was 21 below.
Try to make it to: Next year’s Trend Agenda, founded by Cecily Sommers of Unit 1 in Minneapolis: 612.374.3191; ce****@***t1.com. Jackie Peacha (pi-SHAY) of Kick in Minneapolis handled publicity. She said five local women business owners put on the show: 612.929.0160; jp*****@*ac.com
Marimar Café in south Minneapolis seated eight people in the kitchen one freezing January evening, a special event to please a steady patron and a nice way to boost business on a weekday.
Chef Brian Crouch turned out luscious small plates of yellowjack, lobster, beef tenderloin and more, in a room he decorated with twinkly lights so it didn’t look industrial. He said he hadn’t served a chef’s table before at the two-year-old restaurant, but would do it again if asked. “Not too often, though,” he said, because he doesn’t want to get sick of it.
Owner Marcy Alfonsi said some of the “real high-end restaurants” in town offer chef’s tables (she cited Goodfellows), but it’s rare among neighborhood bistros. She’d do it again, during the week when business isn’t so brisk. “It’s kind of weird to have people in your kitchen because we think it’s such a mess. But it worked out well, exceptionally well,” Alfonsi said.
Try to make it to: Marimar Café, in or out of the kitchen: 612.728.1123.
Trust has become a critical issue in organizations today, said Julio Olalla, a famed educator and speaker who headlined a Minnesota Coaches Association event Jan. 29. “What does it mean to trust? We don’t know exactly what it is. We only know that it is missing,” he went on.
Nobody in the work force will have simple trust, Olalla said, because that’s the kind a child has for parents: “untested, taken for granted.” Instead, leaders must work on developing nurtured trust. “It is fully self-aware of its own conditions and limitations,” he said.
If someone makes a promise to you, he said, you make the following assessments, about the promiser’s sincerity, competence and reliability. He outlined actions to take to restore trust:
• Apologize for your mistakes, inconsistencies and broken promises
• Learn to forgive. “That’s one of the most profound declarations available to human beings,” he said
• Do not assume that all breaches of trust are betrayals.
• Remember that trust is not only earned, it must be given.
Try to make it to: A Minnesota Coaches Association event: 952.646.2445; www.minnesotacoaches.org; or contact Suzanne Kochevar of TEC and En-Visioneering, who studied with Olalla since 1995 and introduced him at the event: 952.474.2462; su*****@*************ng.com; www.teconline.com
The United States needs universal health care, said Lois Quam, CEO of Ovations, a $6.5-billion unit of UnitedHealth Group in Minnetonka.
“We have a health care system that doesn’t work on a very basic level,” she said. “It’s jarring to be here in Minnesota, home of Medtronic, St. Jude’s and Mayo Clinic,” and yet have people without access to care.
Quam spoke Feb. 20 at the Women for Planned Parenthood quarterly luncheon, at which heavy hitters in health care and politics address a crowd of politically engaged women and a few men.
She advocates “using the vast resources spent on health in a way that expands coverage while conserving resources.” That will require “an expanded role of nursing,” and “a better job of translating most recent scientific research into practice.”
Quam worked with then-First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton on her failed health care reform initiative. Quam complimented the work of Planned Parenthood. “It is important for brave people like you to help inspire the community about health care reform,” she said.
A point to ponder: Quam made no mention of the role played by a highly profitable publicly held health insurer and health maintenance company such as UnitedHealth Group in a system where costs continue to escalate. The Informer thought that too cranky of a question to ask in the brief q&a that followed.
Thanks to: Clare Scott, marketing director at Fredrikson & Byron law firm in Minneapolis, for inviting the Informer. Scott is joining the group’s steering committee.
Try to make it to: A Women for Planned Parenthood quarterly fund-raising luncheon. Contact Nicole Courneya: 651.696.5520.
