We arrived at 7:45 p.m. on a Sunday night, and it was immediately obvious that we had just missed the maelstrom. The dining room was absolutely trashed, like a frat party had been held there. Every table was piled high with dirty dishes, glasses and cutlery; the floor was covered with wadded napkins and pieces of food. Even tables on the patio were covered in trash.

Clearly the staff was completely overwhelmed. There were just three employees working, one at the cash register and two at the grill. And people continued to pour in through the door after us. It’s little wonder the staff felt compelled to keep taking orders and cooking food.

I asked the woman at the cash register for a cloth so I could clean a table. She was quite flustered and replied that I shouldn’t have to do it, that she would do it for me. But she never did.

So my husband returned to the cash register and asked to speak with the manager, who was cooking at the grill. The manager wouldn’t stop his work long enough to come out from behind the grill and speak with my husband, so Mark literally yelled from the counter to the back, “YOUR RESTAURANT IS FILTHY, YOU SHOULD BE EMBARRASSED, AND WE NEED SOMEONE TO CLEAN A TABLE FOR US!”

The manager shrugged his shoulders at us — like too bad, so sad, nothing he could do. Then he turned back around and continued cooking food.

We should have walked out. Or at least had our food packaged to go. But it was late and our daughter was starving, so I relocated someone else’s dirty dishes, pulled out the baby wipes I carry everywhere in my purse and cleaned off a table for us.

While we ate, my husband and I discussed what the manager should have done, given the circumstances. And what he should have done was focus on longer-term business goals — building a positive brand image, ensuring customer loyalty — rather than the shorter-term business goal of cooking a pasta bowl.

The manager should have locked the door — or told incoming customers there would be a delay. Then he should have suspended grill operations long enough to deploy his entire team into the dining room to clean tables and sweep floors.

It would have taken the whole crew five, 10 minutes max, to clean that dining room. Then it would be ready for new diners and those of us already eating would have seen that a clean and pleasant dining experience was important to this manager.

He then could have passed out “free appetizer” coupons to anyone inconvenienced by his managerial decision, perhaps ensuring that people would return.

Since we eat at this restaurant frequently, I know ours was an aberrant experience. But imagine a patron visiting for the first time, walking into that filthy restaurant and encountering harried and disengaged employees. Chances are that chain lost a potential customer for life.

But the manager wasn’t thinking about brand image or customer loyalty; he was thinking only about having to cook the next bowl of pasta. He allowed a temporary business pressure to take priority over permanent business needs. And that was a mistake.

It’s easy for daily “tyranny of the urgent” to pull our attention away from longer-term goals of building a positive brand image or ensuring customer loyalty, whether we’re in food service or marketing communications. We must be vigilant so we don’t let that happen.

The show hasn’t changed all that much over the years – lots of very smart people talking about cutting-edge drug development and manufacturing processes, students looking for a big career break, companies big and small talking about their capabilities, new equipment and building expansions.

I’m a true believer in integrated marketing – using a range of tactics to communicate with your audience and meet your goals. But I also acknowledge that tactics have a way of cycling through. Whether they are effective or not tends to change over time.

So what about the industry trade show? Where it is in that cycle?

This year at AAPS, we definitely saw a smaller representation of companies in the exhibit hall. Companies had a smaller presence – firms who previously had HUGE booths in the 40×40+ range had downsized to 20×20 or even 10×20. Companies had fewer giveaways and contests. And some firms who had a decent-sized presence in past years weren’t exhibiting at all.

But on the flip side, some firms with smaller booths added more value to their presence. They had special events at their booths, offered premium food and beverage during cocktail hour (which, FYI, begins at 3 p.m. in trade-show land) and some even hired entertainment (break dancers!)

Break dancers at AAPS!

A video posted by Sinclair & Co. (@sinclair_co) on Nov 11, 2015 at 1:08pm PST

Many people wondered aloud to me if it was worth it to come to the show and exhibit. Does spending all that money really result in a more prosperous bottom line? Do you get new clients? Close deals? The discussion was especially relevant because the number of attendees was down, as well. With fewer attendees and exhibitors, how could this be a good expenditure in a tight budget year?

But then something happened. The networking began. Hands started shaking, business cards were exchanged, the buzz of conversation took over the exhibit hall.

By my last day at the show, I’d talked to a LOT of folks. And we all agreed that even though the quantity seemed to be down – from the number of attendees to the number and size of the exhibitors – the quality of the show was still up where it needed to be. Yes, meetings were had, deals struck and connections made.

So, as an integrated marketing tactic, the industry trade show – at least this one – is still a viable option. While many hope that future years will see attendance climb back up, no one seemed willing to skip it entirely. And even if their presence will be on a smaller scale, everyone I talked to planned to return.

So if you’re in the contract pharmaceutical and manufacturing industry, I guess I’ll see you next year at AAPS!

More than 50 years after pop singer Brenda Lee warbled her deep lament for hurting someone’s feelings, public apologies are more abundant than ever before.

Indeed, so many apologies now hurl forth daily from politicians, celebrities, CEOS, celebrities, coaches and other public figures that there is at least one website devoted to critiquing the practice. (Spend some time surfing SorryWatch, because nothing beats hilarious and educational.)

Yet despite the plethora of public apologies — Time magazine compiled a list of the 10 best apologies ever, including one from Plato — people still don’t apologize very well. So here’s a primer on apologies. A good one contains these elements:

• Take responsibility. You did something wrong, otherwise you wouldn’t need to apologize, right? So embrace your failure with “I really screwed up,” and not “Mistakes were made.” Mistakes don’t fall from the sky and randomly hit people.

• Be sincere and empathetic. If someone is suffering thanks to your mistake, you should feel guilty about that. Ashamed, even. Make sure your words say as much.

• Acknowledge consequences. Your mistake didn’t occur inside a vacuum. It triggered negative repercussions that caused difficulty and inconvenience for someone else. You need to recognize that.

• No excuses, no conditional language. Do not even with the “I’m sorry if…” Qualifying language like “I’m sorry if” has no place in a good apology. Likewise, there is never a good excuse for why you made a mistake. Does being drunk, or losing your job, or staying awake for three days bouncing a crying baby, or maintaining a vigil by a dying relative’s bed make your mistake any less onerous for the person suffering its consequences? No. No, it does not. Excuses undermine the value of your apology.That being said, you owe it to yourself and your victim to understand how your mistake occurred. Exactly what happened? And what steps are you taking to ensure it doesn’t happen again? The answers to those questions will drive your personal or professional growth.

• Make amends. You should offer a mitigation plan with your apology: “Here’s how I hope to fix this…” If you have no idea how to mitigate your mistake, have the courtesy to ask, “How might I make this up to you?” As the folks at SorryWatch so eloquently state, the point of an apology is to make someone feel better. You make someone feel better by trying to remedy your error. You do not make someone feel better by trying to promote yourself, save your business or limit liability.

A recent example of a public apology offered correctly comes from Levi Pettit, a University of Oklahoma student featured in an undercover video that went viral online. He was shown leading his fraternity brothers in singing a song that used a racial epithet, referenced lynching and boasted that the house would never admit black students.

Pettit didn’t just say he was sorry. He went a step further, meeting with leaders within his local black community to apologize personally and to begin volunteering on racial justice issues. His actions conveyed sincere regret, as well as his desire to learn from his mistake and apply his understanding to some larger societal good. And when Pettit finally went public with his apology, he was flanked by the very people he had hurt with his actions.
 

• Finally, move on. After you’ve apologized, made amends and learned from your mistake, dust off your hands and move on. Languishing in the painful past just hurts everyone involved more.

My maternal grandmother, Imogene Nance – Mama Jean to us – was extremely devoted to her mother and sister. There’s a long back-story there; for brevity’s sake, let’s just say that Mama Jean was destitute growing up, and her mother and her sister were all she had.

After Mama Jean and Aunt Kat grew up and started their own families, they would gather together for holiday dinners. My great-grandmother, Margaret – Other Mama to us – contributed the cranberry salad. It was her signature dish.

My mother inherited Other Mama’s old-fashioned food grinder. Here’s a photo of what it looks like:

As a child, I loved helping make the cranberry salad. I loved smelling the orange as the food grinder released the peel’s fragrance, and I loved hearing the pop and crack of cranberries in the blades.

My grandmother once tried using a blender on the cranberries and orange peel, reporting that they came out too mushy. We’ve never tried a food processor, but I would imagine a coarse setting would work.

Here’s the recipe, handed down in my family since the 1930s.

Other Mama’s Cranberry Salad

1 package fresh cranberries (12 ounces)
2 small packages lemon Jello
1¾ cups sugar
½ cup chopped pecans
2 naval oranges, peeled and sectioned (remove all white pith)

Coarsely grind cranberries and orange rind through food processor. Dissolve Jello in 2 cups of hot water. Add sugar and stir until thoroughly dissolved. When thickened, add cranberries and orange rind, nuts and sections of orange. Place in mold and refrigerate to congeal. More orange sections may be added if desired.

Here’s a picture of the salad:

Psst — See more of our favorite recipes all week over on Pinterest!

Recently at AAPS in Chicago (reference earlier post), Metrics personnel were manning their booth in the late afternoon. It had been a long day, but it wasn’t over yet. Still to come was a cocktail reception on the show floor, followed by a night of entertaining clients.

Everyone was tired and restless, and they were getting a little punchy.

It turns out everyone had also made the rounds and collected quite a few giveaways from some of the area booths. And the favorite item turned out to be a pair of neon green and black Ray-Ban style sunglasses. So we snapped some pics and shared our “gang” with the social folks at AAPS via twitter:

Turns out folks actually READ that stuff! Not much later, a visitor to the booth commented on the cool picture we posted.

The commonalities: They’re all there to get exposure, make connections, get new leads, catch up with key clients, etc. And of course, they all want to feel like the trip (and the expense) was worth it in the end.

But there are quite a few differences. Each one had a different booth size, different strategy and a very different outlook on the show.

The challenge for me is to support each one with the right amount of attention. And to be there when they need me and to get things done for them. Whether it’s helping with basic booth strategy, troubleshooting structure or booth layout problems, or executing a PR campaign during the show, I really enjoy working with each one and helping them get the most out of the show.

I also enjoy going around and looking at the companies who are new, who have rebranded, or who have invested in a new booth or campaign. And it seemed that 2012 was a year for added expense when it came to booth space and branding. Quite a few companies added to their space with more and bigger structures, or with new creative campaigns.

I look forward each year to assisting in the planning and strategy sessions for AAPS – and to seeing those plans being implemented.

We’re already thinking about next year and what we can do that’s new and different in San Antonio!

If you look at the date of this blog post and the previous blog post, you’ll see that somewhere along the way, we lost some of our Sinclairity. So when we caution our clients that a blog is big commitment, we say so while shamefully remembering our neglected blog.

When the going gets tough due to busy schedules, unexpected changes or a lack of focus, a blog is one of the easiest things to let slide. So how do you regain that focus? Here’s what we’ve done.

1. Review where you were.

Read your previous posts and see what you think of them. Use the distance and perspective to think about what you’d like to do differently.

2. Document where you want to be.

The big takeaway from our blog review is that we didn’t always focus on our four core competencies: marketing strategy, creative, digital and PR. We meandered a bit from our strengths and how we execute on them on a weekly basis. So our plan is to take a more introspective approach to future blog posts and share our perspectives on these areas.

Another idea that we’ve helped our clients with is to brainstorm a list of potential topics and put them on paper. These could be evergreen topics that you can pull from any time to quickly write on a topic you know well. These are good supplemental materials to the day-to-day work you’re doing or current events in your outside world – from your local community to your industry.

3. Repurpose!

The time it takes to put together a blog post seems like a better use of time when you’re using that content multiple ways. We will strive to integrate our Pinterest, Twitter, blog and our newly updated website to tell an ongoing story in a few different ways.

Since we last left our blog in 2010, a lot has changed in the social media world. Many of us at the agency are more involved in Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook and LinkedIn for ourselves and our clients and have been integrating them in interesting ways. We’ll talk more about that in another post.

4. Don’t go it alone.

We are a team of authors who hold each other responsible for generating new content. That’ll help.

If your blog has a single author, then reach out to your network, audience or colleagues for inspiration. Sometimes blogging can seem like shouting into a black hole, but knowing that you have a support network that is listening to what you have to say can add purpose to your posts. And it’s never a bad idea to keep your audience in mind for anything you’re writing.

5. It happens.

I recently heard from one of my favorite blogger friends who had slowed the pace of posting to his own blog. He shared that he was taking some time to reassess his material. I liked hearing this for a couple of reasons.

First, it’s a great idea to proactively take a step back and review your content and see if it is speaking to your own perspective and adding to the conversation. How are people responding to your posts: which ones draw the most comments, which the least?

Second, it is comforting to know that even a very good blogger who is an author and has a strong, unique perspective struggles. It happens.

Since that conversation, I’ve been thinking about how some of my favorite movies from my teens would be different if social networking sites like FaceBook, Twitter and YouTube were part of the story.  With a nod to John Hughes:

Imagine getting a text message saying “Save Ferris! Donate $5 now by texting “Ferris” to 12345.”  Or consider how much more complicated Ferris’s cover-up would have to be if his Danke Schoen performance were a YouTube sensation?

It certainly would have been nice for Grandpa Howard to Tweet that Long Duk Dong was coming to Jenny’s wedding in Sixteen Candles so Sam could have been prepared.  Farmer Ted’s FaceBook page would have hundreds of out-of-focus pictures of the prom queen in a Rolls Royce.

If Clark W. Griswold had been following the Wally World Twitter feed, he would have known about their scheduled maintenance before hauling the family truckster across the country.

Besides being an entertaining thought, it’s made me see how much social media is changing the story of our lives.  It’s not about Farmville or tweeting which breakfast cereal you chose today.  It’s about sharing bits of ourselves to make connections to help each other out — and isn’t that what marketing is all about?

The store had four models on display behind the cash register. When I described my need to the clerk sitting on a stool, playing with his Blackberry, he casually pointed over his shoulder.

“We’re out of the Sony so you’ll have to buy that one, the floor model,” he said, his eyes firmly affixed on his Blackberry.

Suddenly he looked up and added, “No matter which model you get, you need an extended warranty.” And he proceeded to lecture me on the notorious unreliability of portable DVD players. Their batteries fail. Their screens quit working.

“And if you lose the power cord, forget it,” he said. “Good luck replacing that.”

Now, I know that (a) most extended warranties are a complete waste of money and (b) they represent pure profit, which is why retailers are so eager to sell them. But to try to make a sale by describing how bad the actual product is before I’ve bought the product? That’s nutty.

Good service means understanding your customer’s needs and doing your best to meet them. In this situation, the clerk made no effort to find the best portable DVD player for my family. It’s why I walked out the door without buying anything.

Companies that don’t grasp the concept of good service will find themselves –like this retailer – “struggling to remain relevant.”

While the feds explore whether Mary Easley’s husband, former N.C. Gov. Mike Easley, violated any campaign rules as they relate to her hiring, I feel confident saying some of the folks involved violated three basic rules about communicating with the media.

These are rules we at Sinclair & Co. cover during media training with clients and they are pretty fundamental:

• Never lie. This seems like a no brainer, but time and time again people fail to heed this simple admonition. (Remember Richard Nixon? Bill Clinton?) Lying only makes your problem worse – and lies will always come to light.
• When you have bad news to share, share it early and quickly. Bad news is just like a stuck-on Band-Aid® – you must address it quickly. Sure, it’ll hurt like heck and you may even scream, but then the pain is gone. As N.C. State officials learned the hard way, taking off a bad-news bandage bit by painful bit prolongs the agony for everyone involved.
• Admit your mistakes – then move on. Martha Stewart is an excellent example of this. Sentenced to time in prison for insider training, Stewart came out ready to put the past behind her and move her career forward. Her prison time has become a mere mention in most articles; it’s no longer the primary focus.

The fundamentals of strong media relations really are the fundamentals of life – don’t lie, do the right thing and don’t dwell in the past.