“Feedback is a gift.”

Driven by a determination to make the world a better place, Chris Yoko is focused on helping people, and the organizations they belong to, pave the road to a more utopian world. As president and CEO of Yoko Co, he helps like-minded organizations build and champion themselves using their most powerful asset, their web presence. Throughout his career, he has worked with some of the planet’s largest brands, like Ritz Carlton, Pampers, and Living Social. Chris excels at aligning strategy and execution with goals and objectives, solving unusual problems, and helping to create a remarkable experience. His background encompasses a well-rounded mix of media, sales, marketing, and entrepreneurial experience. When Chris isn’t fearlessly leading, you’ll likely find him on the ice playing hockey, with his nose buried in a book, or playing and exploring with his incredible wife and two daughters.

Listen & Learn:

• What you can learn from negative reviews.
• Setting up systems to enable your team to ask for customer reviews.
• The social listening tools Chris recommends to monitor your brand’s online reputation.
• How a well-deployed reputation management approach can build brand ambassadors.
• Recommendations for creating a reputation management approach.
• Why reputation management starts with listening.

TO LEARN MORE ABOUT YOKO CO, CLICK HERE.

TO FIND CHRIS YOKO ON LINKEDIN, CLICK HERE.

“Brand recovery is a journey. Be alert and mindful of customer sentiment and speak from the heart.”

Brands that acknowledge and embrace change through their communications strategies and recovery planning can win customers’ hearts and minds. Learn more on this edition of the Integrate & Ignite podcast mini-series.

Listen & Learn:  

• How to launch marketing campaigns that reengage stakeholders.
• The importance of providing your customers straight talk, reassurance, and consistency as we transition into the New Normal.
• Why it’s important to reassess messaging every couple of weeks.
• The importance of understanding buyer sentiment.

“The consumer is you.”

Renata Ferraiolo began her career at British American Tabaco (Souza Cruz), in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Throughout her career, she has held many different roles all over the world in marketing, sales, and general management. Known as a result-driven, creative and people-person marketing executive, she has over 23 years of FMCG experience and is a storyteller by nature. Renata is very focused on developing and expanding on marketing capabilities, brand purpose, social cause marketing, and omnichannel. She prides herself on being a global citizen, with passion for her family, traveling, and discovering new things.

Listen And Learn:

• Set of strategies that focus on personalizing customer touch points across channels.
• Her philosophy of humanizing marketing.
• Combining the emotional and the functional.
• Building stories and emotional epiphanies.
• The power of storytelling.
• Getting your team in the right mindset to implement a People-First marketing strategy

TO FIND RENATA FERRAIOLO ON LINKEDIN, CLICK HERE.

“It’s key to understand how you can repurpose the skills, capabilities, and resources in your organization to solve new problems.”

Graeme Strachan is a management consultant with a passion for helping companies succeed by aligning operational reality to strategic intent. Working across industries as diverse as financial services, mining, education, digital media, and the not-for profit world for 20 years, he is known to bring breakthrough-thinking to solve complex business problems. Graeme is committed through client work and community involvement to making Denver a better place to work and live. As CEO of ViTL Solutions his job is to support and develop the company’s team so each individual is enabled and enthused to deliver outstanding results for their clients.

Listen & Learn:

• How companies can traverse the value gap once the COVID crisis is over.
• Ensuring that you can create as much value as possible for the costs of your goods and services.
• Solving new problems for new and existing customers.
• Understanding how you can repurpose the skills, capabilities, and resources in your organization to solve new problems.
• How your value proposition changed because of COVID.
• Why straight talk, reassurance, and consistency is important during the COVID crisis.

TO LEARN MORE ABOUT VITL, CLICK HERE.

TO FIND GRAEME STRACHAN ON LINKEDIN, CLICK HERE.

“When you are experiencing disruption and change, there is no better time to disrupt and change.”

Shawn Rogers, vice president of corporate marketing at TIBCO, is an internationally recognized strategist, thought leader, speaker, and author specializing in artificial intelligence, machine learning, analytics, business intelligence, Cloud, IoT, Big Data, and social media technologies. He has founded and sold two Internet/media start-ups and co-founded the BeyeNETWORK. Shawn guided the company's international growth strategy and helped the BeyeNETWORK grow globally making it the largest and most-read online community covering analytics, business intelligence, data warehousing, and data integration.

Listen & Learn:

• What smart companies are doing to keep their brands vibrant during the COVID crisis.
• Why brands need to shift their focus to include a more service-oriented message.
• There’s a time to drive our businesses and then there’s a time to be part of a community and look for ways to help that community.
• How to use the current crisis to differentiate your brand.
• Why it’s important to have a handle on the analytical environment that impacts your business.
• Why it’s important to be beware of the data changes that are impacting your businesses during the COVID crisis.

TO LEARN MORE ABOUT TIBCO, CLICK HERE.

TO FIND SHAWN ROGERS ON LINKEDIN, CLICK HERE.

“Protecting your hard work and building brand loyalty is absolutely vital at this stage.”

66% of customers say that hearing from brands during the pandemic is comforting and reassuring. What are you doing to connect and engage with your audience during COVID? Tune in to this special mini-series installment of the Integrate & Ignite podcast to learn more.

Listen & Learn:

• Defining your new normal and driving action through full-funnel marketing approaches.
• How marketers can adapt and adopt as buying habits are changing because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Protecting your brand’s reputation by differentiating your approach.
• Building novel marketing approaches that sustain, foster, and leverage relationships.

“There is always a big gap between who we think our customers are and who they actually are.”

Dean McBeth is managing partner and co-founder of Shepherd, an upstart consulting firm focused on customer-first strategies. He and his team help brands grow and bring companies closer to their customers. Dean – who is also an award-winning strategist and creative, a teacher, and a nationally sought-after speaker in the marketing and advertising industry – understands that it is the relationship between a business and its customers that creates meaningful products, experiences, and communications. Dean’s work is taught today at every major communication school in the country, and over the course of his career, he has held senior positions with some of the biggest agencies in the world, including numerous senior executive posts at the likes of Wieden+Kennedy, Barton F. Graf (BFG), Ketchum, Circuit of the Americas (COTA), and Crispin, Porter +Bogusky (CP+B).

Listen & Learn:

• Affinity scores and cultivating your tribes to better understand buyer intent.
• How to use your core audiences to gain insight, develop new tribes, and increase revenue.
• The importance of cultivating the human insight.
• Tribal Marketing strategies that drive acquisition.
• How to find the sweet spot of sub-cultures that make up your satellites of influence.
• Mapping out your “satellites of influence.”

TO LEARN MORE ABOUT SHEPHERD, CLICK HERE.

TO FIND DEAN MCBETH ON LINKEDIN, CLICK HERE.

Taking control of the narrative surrounding your brand is more important now than ever. I give advice on providing straight talk to your customers and your team during COVID-19 on part one of my new marketing mini-series.

Listen & Learn:

• Without consistent communication, a bad storm will only become worse.
• How to manage your reputation during the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Straight talk is the rule of the day: Be real, reassure, and be consistent.
• Tips to drive your marketing and crisis communications in today’s uncertain marketplace.

“You can grow your audience and email list by thousands of prospects.”

Liam Austin, co-founder of Entrepreneurs HQ, is a virtual event planner and host, an online conference consultant, and a virtual summit strategist for people and businesses looking to increase their authority, grow their email lists (and audience), build a network of influencers, and generate additional revenue. The Entrepreneurs HQ community attracts experts to cover key topics of interest to their audience of 150,000+ small business owners, and he works with key partners to help promote these virtual summits, giving free value to audiences while partners benefit from exposure and revenue. His career has spanned the globe, from Australia to Europe to America, and he has been featured in multiple publications including BRW, The Australian, Inc., Startup Smart, Real Estate Business, and others.

Listen & Learn:

• Establishing authority and rapport with your audiences through video during a virtual event.

• Leveraging your audience to create virality and grow your brand ambassadors with virtual meetings, events, and conferences.

• Virtual meetings can make it easier to attract top speakers and influencers to your event.

• How virtual events can generate revenue.

• The cost of a virtual event cost.

• Keeping up with technology and improving your interactive virtual events.

TO LEARN MORE ABOUT ENTREPRENEURS HQ, CLICK HERE.

TO FIND  LIAM AUSTIN ON LINKEDIN, CLICK HERE.

“Chatter does matter!”

Bill Bice has always been an entrepreneur, starting his first company at age 14. At 18, he started ProLaw Software, the first integrated ERP for law firms. Bill then became a VC as a founding partner in the Verge Fund, investing in high tech, high growth companies. As a serial entrepreneur, Bill believes that good marketing is all about data and he is passionate about helping small businesses grow. A programmer at heart, Bill founded boomtime, maker of fuse, a marketing-as-a-service platform that approaches marketing as a technology problem. In his many years in business, Bill has learned that when you follow the data, really good things happen. Bill has one simple goal: to enable small businesses to more effectively compete with their larger competitors.

Listen & Learn:

• The importance of having a responsive website.
• Building engagement on LinkedIn.
• How to create social currency to grow your customer base, get referrals, and boost viable leads.
• The importance of following the data.
• Why go-to-market strategies need to be grounded in word-of-mouth marketing.
• Why consistency is the one thing that many brands forget.

TO LEARN MORE ABOUT BOOMTIME, CLICK HERE.

TO FIND BILL BICE ON LINKEDIN, CLICK HERE.

“Only collect the data you intend to use.”

Scott Cohen is a proven email marketing veteran with 15 years of experience as both a brand-side marketer and email marketing agency executive. Currently, Scott is the senior email marketing manager at purple, where he combines his award-winning copywriting chops and industry-renowned email marketing strategy and execution expertise into building, growing, and optimizing a $100MM+ email marketing program.

Listen And Learn:

• Where most email programs fail.
• How to build an effective list.
• Why he prefers a single opt-in approach.
• Measuring KPIs.
• GDPR regulations.
• The need for direct and explicit opt-ins.
• How email marketing ties into the larger customer experience.

TO LEARN MORE ABOUT PURPLE, CLICK HERE.

TO FIND SCOTT COHEN ON LINKEDIN, CLICK HERE.

“Fish where the fish are.”

Mike Westgate is vice president of marketing at Briggo Coffee, an Austin-based consumer tech company that serves gourmet coffee and tea via mobile app and an autonomous vending system. The company is currently in scale-up mode, growing from Texas markets to the Bay Area and beyond. In addition to leading all brand and marketing strategy, Mike supports business development, forges strategic brand partnerships, designs and implements retail sales programs, and drives Briggo’s product roadmap. This is a man of many talents. His professional experiences include brand/product development, go-to-market strategy, consumer and tech product marketing, digital analytics, PR strategy, account management, and team leadership. 

Listen And Learn:

• The strategies behind audience-based affinity profiling.
• Determining your hero segment and core tribe.
• Developing an Affinity Score for your audiences.
• Tapping into your early adopters to make your product better.
• Taking a Netflix and Uber approach to marketing coffee.
• Extending the power of your content.

TO LEARN MORE ABOUT BRIGGO, CLICK HERE.

TO FIND MIKE WESTGATE ON LINKEDIN, CLICK HERE.

How to extend the power of your content with your core tribes and early adopters. Learn more by calling the Avocet Communications team today at 303-678-7102.

“The company owns its brand, the public owns its reputation.”

Bill Coletti is a reputation management, crisis communications, and professional development expert, keynote speaker, and the best-selling author of Critical Moments: The New Mindset of Reputation Management. He has more than 25 years of global experience managing high-stakes crises, issues management, and media relations challenges for Fortune 500 companies and in winning global political campaigns. Bill previously co-led the Global Risk Management and Crisis Communications Practice for Hill+Knowlton Strategies, and he has provided senior counsel for numerous clients including AT&T, Target Corporation, American Airlines, The Home Depot, and Xerox over the course of his career.

Listen And Learn:

• Why he recommends a hands-on approach.
• how successful reputation management hinges on recognizing and responding within those critical moments in time.
• The importance of involving executive leadership.
• The difference between reputation management and crisis management/crisis communications.
• Setting expectations with the Four As.

TO FIND BILL COLETTI ON LINKEDIN, CLICK HERE.

The importance of crisis communications and reputation management. Learn more by calling the Avocet Communications team today at 303-678-7102.

“Eventually the good messaging will resonate and spread with good people.”

David DeCamillis is vice president of Sales and Marketing at Platte River Networks, a Denver-based IT Managed Services firm. He has quite the story to tell about how his company “survived the Hillary Clinton email scandal.” During that tumultuous time, his firm was dragged headfirst into the international crisis that included paparazzi, congressional and federal investigations, and death threats. But he and the company survived through timely crisis management, dedication, and perseverance. David is well-known for his expertise in security enhancements, employee training, social media damage control, media management, website preservation, client communication, and more. He serves as president and founder of Denver Technology Partners and the Denver Biz Tech Expo.

Listen And Learn:

• Insights into handling damage control in the media and on social media.
• Managing messaging with internal and external audiences.
• The impact of a crisis on Google searches, reviews, and rankings.
• The importance of hiring a media and PR firm BEFORE a crisis.
• How to push out positive and uplifting stories as part of a crisis and rebranding strategy.

TO LEARN MORE ABOUT PLATTE RIVER NETWORKS, CLICK HERE.

TO FIND DAVID DECAMILLIS ON LINKEDIN, CLICK HERE.

“(It’s about) giving your customers somewhere to come back to.”

Brittany Vriesman is senior manager of digital marketing at Gaiam and SPRI brands, a leading lifestyle brand with a mission to make yoga, fitness, and wellness accessible to all. With nearly a decade in the digital marketing space, Brittany has managed digital platforms across event management, travel, and retail sectors. She brings a diverse background to her current role at Gaiam, where she focuses on marketing and customer retention and acquisition in both the B2B and direct to consumer spaces. Brittany taps into her experience across distinct industries to blend customer engagement, loyalty, unique promotions, and partnership opportunities to support revenue-driving initiatives.

Listen & Learn:

• The loyalty programs that have helped differentiate Gaiam in the marketplace.
• Creating micro-moments to highlight the brand experience.
• How to create customers for life.
• Strategies to surprise and delight customers.
• The many touchpoints customers need along the funnel before making a buying decision.
• Why there is no one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to the customer journey.

TO LEARN MORE ABOUT GAIAM, CLICK HERE.

TO FIND BRITTANY VRIESMAN ON LINKEDIN, CLICK HERE.

Strategies to surprise and delight customers. Call Lori Jones today at 303-678-7102 to learn more.

“Let’s make better mistakes tomorrow.”

Kristin Miller has over 15 years of PR experience, with a passion for technology PR. She is currently corporate communications director at Ping Identity, a company that helps prevent security breaches, increase employee and partner productivity, and provide personalized customer experiences for some of the world’s largest organizations. Before joining the Ping team, Kristin was head of Webroot’s global PR team, where she focused on cybersecurity across the US, EMEA, Australia, and Japan.  Previously, she was at SSPR, a high tech PR agency working with brands including Groupon, Patagonia, RingCentral, and many others.  An unrepentant fan of the oxford comma, she can be found chasing her six-year-old daughter through playgrounds, cheering for her alma matter Purdue University, or taking Buzzfeed quizzes.

Listen And Learn:

• How and when to create crisis messaging and talking points.
• The importance of working out worst case scenarios before a crisis actually hits.
• How to pick your crisis communications team.
• Why it’s important to tell your side of the story.
• The best and most overlooked place to tell your side of the story.
• Why it’s important to build a crisis PR plan that begins with asking the CEO a key question.

TO FIND KRISTIN MILLER ON LINKEDIN, CLICK HERE.

“During this time period, business continuity is key.”

Listen And Learn:

• Creating continuity and strengthening your brand with both external and internal stakeholders.
• How you can positively impact the bottom line while important sales opportunities are being compromised.
• Unique ways of staying in front of and interacting with your customers.
• Recommendations for increasing blogging and video, social, and digital strategies.
• Ways to extend your message beyond the show floor.

Helping you create continuity and strengthening your brand during a global crisis. Learn more by calling the Avocet Communications team today at 303-678-7102.