If Managing Your Online Branding Hurts, SYNQY Could Ease the Pain

SYNQY -- a new start up near San Francisco -- is introducing an innovation designed to help organizations standardize and update the information that current and prospective customers see online.

Chairman and CEO Michael Weissman says SYNQY applies Meta embed code to a subscriber’s “brand assets”—logos, photos, messaging, video, registration forms, donation pages, white papers, slide presentations, articles, brochures, and so on. Thereafter, when an online user clicks on any coded asset, the right intended information pops up.

How It Works

To demonstrate, Weissman points to an Internet user who’s browsing an online fashion magazine that features a red dress sold by a major online retailer. Typically, when the user clicks on such a photo, she’s yanked off the magazine's website and plunked onto a seller's website. Too often, she has trouble getting back to the online magazine again. With SNYQY, wherever she sees the red dress online—either at the magazine’s site or anywhere else—her click pops up consistent information without jumping to a new site.

That’s the buyer’s (and the magazine’s) advantage. But Weissman says the marketer’s advantage is greater. As the CMO responsible for selling that red dress, SYNQY code automatically ensures that the buying experience is going to be the same for every buyer, every time.

Right for You?

Whether SYNQY is right for a given organization depends on how often people search for or buy that organization’s product(s) online. Weissman explains: “A printing company that depends on direct sales, but very little inbound marketing, is less likely to be a SYNQY customer. But an integrated communications firm that does content marketing and creates news stories to drive sales would be an excellent candidate. Large fundraising organizations with networks of partners or advocates would find SYNQY an option in managing their brand assets, as would a franchise company, political campaign, automobile dealership, or any organization with chapters.”

A New Process

Weissman differentiates SYNQY from so-called brand asset management entities that simply store digital materials for distribution. That process depends on human effort, he says—a sales person, chapter or branch manager, dealer, franchise owner, and so on.  By contrast, SYNQY manages and distributes brand assets without human involvement, thereby saving money. “So often, marketers are involved in non-bonus activities like updating content and keeping channels current. But there's no return for these labor-intensive activities. SYNQY can take over that job."

Build It Yourself?
The concept is easy, but building a competing technology would be very difficult and expensive, Weissman adds. “That's why it hasn't been done before. It would take millions of dollars to replicate what SYNQY does and millions more to keep it updated, but using SNYQY software is easy and inexpensive.”

How Much?

SNYQY costs $100 per user per month, which includes one SYNQY embed code. Additional SYNQY embeds cost $100 apiece per year.

Weissman, who has 25 years of high-tech marketing experience, suggests the price is a bargain for marketers who must spend thousands of dollars—or more—updating widespread, disparate Internet content. “Simply turning a static asset into a SYNQY is a 10 to 15 second effort, from start to finish. So, to take a catalog of 10 brand assets and turn them into trackable, manageable code would take less than five minutes and cost $1,000 — very little for most companies.”

What about retrofitting all the brand assets currently floating on the Internet?

“Many of our customers are starting with new assets,” Weissman says. “Eventually, we expect they will retrofit. The other approach is to put an entire product catalog inside a single SYNQY. This gives the best of both worlds.”

Free 30-day trials are available at SYNQY.com. Click below for a short video.

Hey, Marketer! Got An Idea? Read This Before You Pitch It to Anybody.

The Art of the Imperfect Pitch, a compelling article from Professor Baba Shiv at Stanford Graduate School, tells us exactly how to sell our ideas to other people. Shiv bases his advice on brain research, especially that of American neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky..

To put it simply, Shiv describes the "X framework" wherein anxiety and fear and contentment oppose one another on the bottom and, on the top, excitement opposes apathy). If, while facing a decision, a person is fundamentally anxious or fearful, that decider will seek to avoid additional stress by "playing it safe." If, on the other hand, the decider is feeling contented, he or she is ready for some risk or excitement -- in other words, open to a new idea.

In a nutshell:
Those with ideas to sell, should avoid pitching their ideas to anxious/fearful colleagues who are predisposed to apathy and likely to retreat from change or risk. Rather, the pitch should be directed to a contented colleague -- a "champion," if you will -- who is open to excitement and change.

Caution:
Shiv suggests that ideas be pitched in draft or incomplete form, not in full-blown detail. Why? As Shiv puts it, "I have observed time after time that if you build a polished prototype, others will see flaws. If you build a rough prototype, they will see potential."

Here is a final key point from Shiv:
"So, from an innovation standpoint, you must discern where your ultimate target manager is on this X Framework. The tip here is that people habitually ride one pathway or the other. Type I personalities are those who instinctually stay on a groove between stress and comfort. These people typically fear making mistakes. In contrast, what I call the Type II personalities are those who tend to move between boredom and excitement … I have found that chief marketing officers and chief information officers, tend to be Type IIs."

And who are the Type Is? The maintenance folks like the information technology managers and chief operating officers.

We knew it was true and now we know why.

Source: Morning Advantage newsletter (September 6) from Harvard Business Review