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News Media Continues Leaping Forward With Social Media

nicolem — Fri, 07 May 2010 05:14:35 +0000

It is amazing how quickly the news media has leaped into social media – while may businesses and corporations still lag behind in hesitation . I read most of my newspapers online now – 3 to be exact and tend to go to several of the sites – where I used to subscribe to magazines. I do admit that there is something great about a beautiful print magazine. My favorites continue to be Vogue, home decor magazines and of course food. Some magazines have been extremely successful in integration of offline and online, Bon Appetite is one that has a robust site and Facebook fan club.

I use Twitter as my news updater as you can now get the world happenings in real time. Remember when the plane landed in the Hudson in NYC? People were tweeting while standing on the wing to be rescued. The protests in Iran were another of those major global events – where you could learn in real time via social media- exactly what was going on. Both by the news media as well as those in the midst of the news stories.

One of my most favorite news publications is the Huffington Post started by Arianna Huffington – has been a long standing proponent of social media and they are doing a spectacular job leveraging Facebook connect and Twitter. They created a real time engagement forum for the TED conference series which I thought was brilliant. What sparked this post was an email I just received from the Washington Post - showing how they are now linking to Facebook connect, encouraging readers to SHARE articles and participate in the stories they read – by commenting on things you find interesting or things your friends are following.

It is now such an easy way to connect with like minded people for so many reasons. Friendship, business, information, opinions ideas and ratings and reviews to name a few. Best of all it works! The world becomes much smaller and the human approach that can be created for business is not to be questioned. Your customers are eager to get to know you. Just watch your nightly news which on many stations both in Canada and the US, cable and major network – that end their broadcast with “please find us on Facebook and Twitter and connect create.cultivate comments, stories etc.”

This week alone I met a Facebook friend in real time that helped me sort out my cell phone debacle. It was like we had known each other for years. Another Facebook friend in the same industry as myself have build up an admirable relationship and passion for the power of digital and the expansion of its tools – that we get to use – to support the success of our clients marketing and communications. We are now doing a small project together. Me here in Toronto – he in California. How can we SHARE all of our resources for a mutually successful relationship? For growth of sales, growth of mind share, growth of ideas, solving problems, events, promotions, product launches – production knowledge and so much more.

Had a great social media week like me? We would love to hear about it. Drop us a line and let us know how the power of the digital world enhanced your life!

Best Nicole

Womenomics—The Emergence of A New Workforce Dynamic

nicolem — Wed, 06 May 2009 17:35:19 +0000

It has been a while since I have focused on an article about women. As a women run and owned firm we are certainly proud to be part of this new dynamic. The article I am going to share is written by Claire Shipman and Katty Kay. I think that this article says it all about where the world is going and how important it is to focus on this most important demographic from a marketing standpoint and from a business persepective. Look at your team—do you support and encourage women in your business? Are you doing business with women run and owned companies? The attached article comes from the women owned Huffington Post and the point……”Survey after survey from California to Norway shows that women are not only good for business, but that companies that employ more senior women actually make more money. Call it Pink Profits“.

Are you ready to grow your pink profits? Weigh in….we want to hear from you.

Best Nicole

The administration sees green shoots appearing in the economic data. We share that optimism. But we’re focused on the arrival of a different color – we see a pink lining in this recession.

In the midst of all the fiscal gloom, the stress over stress tests, there is a part of the population which is, in fact, benefiting from the economic environment. Women. America is on the verge of the biggest workplace revolution since the Second World War. Back then, women were ushered into the work force in vast, unprecedented numbers. And they stayed. Now a different national crisis is set to remake the labor force. In a new and dramatic fashion.

We call this seismic shift Womenomics: the emergence of a new workforce dynamic that is giving women the power to tailor their work lives to better suit their needs. It is a revolution that will allow us to live and work the way we’ve always wanted.

We have enormous professional clout today. Clout that most women don’t even know about. Survey after survey from California to Norway shows that women are not only good for business, but that companies that employ more senior women actually make more money. Call it Pink Profits. The female management style is seen as distinct–and even better. We’re more inclusive, more focused on long-term results and more risk-averse. The buzz this year at Davos? How much better off the economic world would be right now if there had been more sisters at Lehman Brothers. Women are no longer employed as a polite nod to office diversity; we get the jobs because we get the job done – and bring in the profits.

Moreover, in this downturn men are losing their jobs at a faster pace than women. Any day now we will make up a majority in the U.S. labor market. Women are also better educated than men, with more of the coveted graduate degrees that are key indicators of professional and managerial success. And we have the power of our purses. We consume more than men (in 2007, for the first time women even bought more cars than men) and those spending dollars give us huge leverage. Who knows how to cater to our tastes better than we do?

Could it be that it’s okay — finally — to state the obvious? We’re not men.

We not only don’t work the same way–we don’t want the same things or relish the climb up the corporate ladder with such testosterone-driven zeal. We have come to realize that the old career goal of “having it all” really meant “doing it all”, that doesn’t work for us. Indeed, those 60-hour work weeks, the office-meeting-to-day-care-closing dashes, the juggling and struggling – they all tend to push us out the corporate door forever. As Harvard Business School discovered a few years ago, when women are faced with the agonizing choice between career and kids, the children tend to win.

But in a Womenomics world, we don’t have to make that choice anymore. We now have so much clout in the marketplace that we’re not prepared to sit meekly at the boardroom table anymore. We’re rebuilding that table and making it more female friendly.

All across America professional women are carving out work lives that really suit them. Lives where they have time for children, elderly parents, pets, marathons or just themselves. Four out of five of us say we want more flexibility at work. More and more of us want less responsibility. We no longer see our careers as ladders but as waves. We are asking for — and for the first time, in big numbers, we are getting — the right to dial our careers down and dial them back up, according to our needs.

It’s not always easy or straightforward–but we’re choosing to negotiate, to push, for work arrangements that allow us to keep our careers rather than abandon them. And it’s working, because (who knew?) we’re valuable! The mommy-track isn’t a seldom-traveled road to nowhere anymore. It’s become a busy path, often shared by men these days, and one that can still lead to the upper eschelons. Gen Y, in fact, won’t travel any other way, and employers are rushing to accommodate.

And here’s the really exciting thing; the companies that let us work the way we want are discovering huge benefits. Businesses like Best Buy, which have thrown out the clocks and now judge performance entirely on results rather than hours spent in the cubicle, have seen their productivity increase enormously–sometimes by as much as 40%. Why? Because if you treat women, and men, like adults, it should be little surprise their performance improves.

Hang on, you’re probably thinking. What about the big R word? Won’t the recession just put an end to all of this nutty-crunch, feel-good stuff? On the contrary. The truth is rocky economic times are speeding the change. Companies that can no longer reward employees with hefty bonuses, or even any additional cash at all, are looking for more creative ways to hang on to valuable talent. Women, the majority of whom will trade status and dollars for time, are suddenly finding their employers more receptive to alternative work schedules than they were during boom times. And so women are doubly desirable employees now, because not only is our work valued, but our values make us more flexible to strapped employers. Since time is our critical currency, since we’re often looking beyond money alone, we can help employers ride out the crises while reaping benefits ourselves.

Four-day work weeks, furloughs, working from home to save on real-estate costs–all of these once exotic arrangements have become even more commonplace in recent months. And just as with the arrival of women in factories in the 1940s–things will never be the same. Because these moves aren’t just a short-term fix. They will usher in efficiencies and productivity boosts that so far, only enlightened companies have benefited from, and that the newcomers won’t want to lose.

The world of Womenomics has arrived. Don’t let the gloomy economic headlines frighten you. It’s a terrific time to be a professional woman.

This is the start of a regular Womenomics conversation we’ll be having here, on everything from the changing nature of the workplace, to redefining success–for yourself, to how to handle confrontations with your boss.

California’s Biggest Women-Owned Bond Counsel Takes Stock as It Turns 20

nicolem — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 23:29:52 +0000

One of the things I want to continue to do with my blog postings is share with you the wins of admirable companies. Not just those that are run by women but those that are also taking stock of how they can better market to women and, of course, enhance how they market to everyone. One-to-One marketing continues to be important. But one-to-many, where social media now has the power through the many channels that most of us now participate, enables all of us to share ideas, information and pass it on to others.

Quateman LLP is California’s largest women-owned municiple bond counsel firm and is turning 20. The attached article about their accomplishments comes from “The Bond Buyer”. The paragraph that hooked me comes from Lisa Greer Quateman:

“Quateman said she would like to continue to grow the firm and is considering adding another lawyer this year. But growth doesn’t just mean climbing the league tables. It means getting tougher assignments and being taken seriously enough that new clients don’t always think of Quateman as the women-owned firm that’s nice to have as a co-counsel.”

“In a lot of ways, we’ve transcended only being a women-owned business and getting the smaller pieces of deals,” she said. “In our own right now, we are bond counsel, disclosure counsel, underwriters’ counsel on pretty significant deals.”

Quateman said her firm has done extraordinarily complex work over the years, both inside and outside of its muni practice.”

Being respected by sharing the quality and caliber of work that you do will always be the way to present your product, service and value to world at large.

Enjoy the full article below.

Best Nicole

SAN FRANCISCO – Quateman LLP, California’s biggest women-owned municipal bond counsel firm, is turning 20 this year and still growing its slice of the marketplace – long after most governments in the state stopped giving any preference to women-owned businesses.

“Governments and companies want a vendor base that matches their constituency,” said Lisa Greer Quateman, the firm’s founder. “Most importantly in the public finance arena, they value the additional sets of eyes and they realize that it is in their interest to promote new firms and new faces in the business, so that they will have a large enough pool of competing firms from which to choose.”

Quateman, who spent the first part of her career as a securities and real estate lawyer at big national and international companies, started her own firm in 1989 without much thought of being a women-owned business. But as she tried to build the business, she found that governments with diversity programs were more open to hiring an upstart women-owned firm than private-sector securities clients.

Kathleen Brown, now a managing director at Goldman, Sachs & Co. in Los Angeles, helped give Quateman a start in the muni business when she pushed to include women- and minority-owned businesses among the state’s financing teams during her tenure as California treasurer from 1991 to 1995.

Quateman started in the muni bond business as a co-underwriters’ counsel on deals led by Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP, which dominates the public finance business in California. Acceptance into the state bond counsel pool and time spent toiling as a co-counsel opened the door to many more clients for her Los Angeles-based firm.

From 1989 to 2008, Quateman served as bond counsel on $11.6 billion of bonds, according to Thomson Reuters data, with the bulk of that taking place in the past five years. Since 2004, the firm has been bond counsel on $10 billion of bonds, about 85% of its total in the past two decades, according to Thomson. That made it the top ranked women-owned firm in California over the past five years and the seventh ranked firm overall in the state. Quateman also served as underwriters’ counsel on $3.2 billion of bonds.

The firm remains a part of the state’s pool of bond counsel. It has also worked deals as bond counsel, underwriters’ counsel, or disclosure counsel for many major municipal issuers across the state, including Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco.

The firm’s biggest single issue as bond counsel was a $768 million tax and revenue anticipation note for Los Angeles in 2006. Its toughest assignment was a much smaller 2006 deal for Gardena. Quateman was bond counsel and disclosure counsel for the city when it sold $25 million of certificates of participation that got it back into the market after a brush with insolvency.

The firm continued to grow even after California voters amended the state constitution to prohibit public institutions from considering race, sex, or ethnicity in contracting or employment when they passed Ward Connerly’s Proposition 209 in 1996. A series of U.S. Supreme Court cases in the late 1990s also severely restricted the ability of governments to promote women- and minority-owned businesses by requiring “strict scrutiny” of government affirmative action policies.

“Initially, she was hired because we were attempting to meet some [diversity] goals,” said James Preusch, chief financial officer of the Alameda Corridor Transportation Authority in Los Angeles County and former chief financial officer for the Port of Los Angeles, where he first hired Quateman. “But the fact of the matter is that this firm has the ability to carry its weight regardless of that status and far more so now than ever before.”

Quateman has grown from a one-woman shop to a firm that includes a dozen lawyers with major focuses in municipal finance, complex real estate workouts, and corporate finance as its business has grown.

While Lisa Quateman continues to work actively in all the firm’s practice areas, she has added lawyers to specialize in public finance, including Timothy Reimers, whom Quateman calls her “right-hand man” in the public finance practice. The firm employs many men, but remains majority women-owned and is likely to stay that way for the foreseeable future, given its current cast of partners.

“I’d characterize the firm as top-notch,” Preusch said, adding that it delivers “quality work on time, without the Madison Avenue pricing.”

Quateman said she would like to continue to grow the firm and is considering adding another lawyer this year. But growth doesn’t just mean climbing the league tables. It means getting tougher assignments and being taken seriously enough that new clients don’t always think of Quateman as the women-owned firm that’s nice to have as a co-counsel.

Quateman said her firm has done extraordinarily complex work over the years, both inside and outside of its muni practice.

One of her first big breaks was when the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and Resolution Trust Corp. sought to include women in its vendor pool back in the early 1990s during the savings and loan crisis. But she said the quality of the firm’s work helping the FDIC and RTC negotiating hundreds of complicated restructurings and workouts during the nation’s last big real-estate bust helped convince the FDIC to hire the firm again last year, when the credit crunch and housing market implosion brought down IndyMac Bank and Washington Mutual.

While she doesn’t want her firm to get pigeon-holed as just a women-owned law firm, Quateman doesn’t dismiss the importance of the diversity programs that gave her firm a chance to prove itself.

“Gender, per se, should not necessarily be an issue, but if we are honest with ourselves we have to admit that the top ranks in both law and business still do not reflect the percentage of women who are eligible and qualified,” she said. She praised political leaders like New York Gov. David Paterson for finding legal ways to continue to expand the diversity of government supplier networks.

“Leveling the playing field still matters,” Quateman said. “Case in point: About 42% of my graduating class from UCLA School of Law was female, yet today the percentage of female law firm partners and managers is well under half of that.”

Yahoo names new CEO

bcadgroup — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 03:32:08 +0000

In 2009 women still lag behind in math, science and technology. That being said, it is great to see that at the onset of a New Year another women has been named CEO for Yahoo.

We hope that this trend will continue throughout the year. Read below an article from the Globe and Mail about Silicon Valley veteran Carol Bartz as its new chief executive.

Best Nicole

January 13, 2009 at 5:09 PM EST

SAN FRANCISCO — Yahoo Inc. confirms that it has hired Silicon Valley veteran Carol Bartz as its new chief executive.

The decision ends a two-month search to replace Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang.

His short reign as CEO was marred by his refusal to sell Yahoo to Microsoft for US$47.5 billion — about $30-billion (U.S.) more than Yahoo is worth now.

The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company would be luring Ms. Bartz, 60, from Autodesk Inc., which specializes in making design software for architects and engineers. Ms. Bartz was the San Rafael, Calif.-based company’s CEO from 1992 until 2006, when she stepped aside to become executive chairman.

Ms. Bartz’s appointment could set the stage for Microsoft to renew its efforts to buy Yahoo’s Internet search operations as a way of mounting a more serious threat to Google, the market leader. Microsoft had been reluctant to deal with Mr. Yang because he rebuffed several previous overtures, including a $47.5-billion offer to buy Yahoo in its entirety last May.

Microsoft subsequently withdrew that bid, valued at $33 a share, and now Yahoo’s stock price hovers around $12. Mr. Yang had hoped to placate shareholders by using Google’s superior technology to sell some of the ads alongside Yahoo’s search results, but that idea unravelled in November after federal antitrust regulators threatened to block the deal.

Investors didn’t seem convinced Yahoo would be better off with Ms. Bartz. Yahoo shares fell 27 cents to $11.95 in Tuesday afternoon’s trading.

Ms. Bartz’s track record indicates she likely would act quickly to build upon Yahoo’s strengths while doing her best to shed the weaknesses.

“She is able to see the essence of things because she doesn’t spend a lot of time worrying about how people are going to feel,” said Nilofer Merchant, a former Autodesk manager who is now CEO of technology consultant Rubicon. “She is driven by doing the best thing for the business.”

Under Ms. Bartz’s leadership, Autodesk’s annual revenue has ballooned from $285-million to $2.2-billion. Perhaps more importantly to Yahoo’s long-suffering shareholders, Autodesk’s stock price rose by an annual average of nearly 20 per cent during Ms. Bartz’s stint as CEO, beating the 10.6 per cent annual average for the Standard & Poor’s 500 index.

Ms. Bartz had established her management chops before joining Autodesk. She spent nine years at Sun Microsystems Inc., where she eventually became the No. 2 executive behind the server maker’s then-CEO, Scott McNealy.

Despite Ms. Bartz’s resume, she will likely face questions about whether she is a good fit at Yahoo because she lacks any background in advertising – the primary source of Yahoo’s income.

Yahoo also is far larger than Autodesk, with annual revenue of more than $7-billion and roughly 13,000 employees, nearly twice the size of Autodesk’s work force.

As one of the first women to run a technology company, Ms. Bartz is used to being underestimated. Even after she had been Autodesk’s CEO for years, some of her male counterparts occasionally mistook her for an administrative assistant while she was attending industry conferences.

Before graduating from the University of Wisconsin in 1971 with a degree in computer science, Ms. Bartz was a cheerleader, homecoming queen and a cocktail waitress – a job that helped pay her college tuition.

In her corporate life, Ms. Bartz talks more like a sailor, said Mr. Merchant, who recalls Ms. Bartz starting days with profanity-laced phone calls demanding to know why a sale hadn’t been closed. After dressing down a worker, Ms. Bartz usually found a way to end the conversation on an encouraging note. “She always wanted to make sure the job got done,” Mr. Merchant said.

Ms. Bartz hasn’t hesitated to get rid of employees incapable of executing her strategy. Within six months of taking over at Autodesk, she had purged its management ranks.

If Yahoo turns its search operations over to Microsoft, many analysts expect the company to lay off thousands of workers to save money. As it is, Yahoo just dumped 1,500 workers to help shore up its profits during the recession. The company also has lost many top managers during the past two years as Yahoo’s malaise worsened.

Yahoo’s decision to bring in an outsider could alienate its president, Susan Decker, who also was a candidate for the CEO job. Ms. Decker’s close ties to Mr. Yang and Yahoo’s previous CEO, Terry Semel, probably worked against her, because her appointment wouldn’t have appeased shareholders clamouring for a shake-up.

Ms. Decker, though, already has a working relationship with Ms. Bartz because both women sit on the board of chip maker Intel Corp.

Ms. Bartz also would have to coexist with Mr. Yang, who will revert to his titular role of “chief Yahoo” while remaining on the company’s board. Those two also share a boardroom together as directors at Internet gear maker Cisco Systems Inc.

This wouldn’t be Ms. Bartz’s first daunting challenge. When Autodesk hired her in CEO in 1992, the company was facing a shareholder revolt amid concerns that Autodesk was overly dependent on a single software product that accounted for nearly all of its revenue. Now, Autodesk offers an array of design software as well as computer programs that help add special effects to movies and TV shows.

To compound her initial problems at Autodesk, Ms. Bartz was diagnosed with breast cancer shortly after taking the job. She had a mastectomy and was back in the office in four weeks.