10 questions every candidate should be ready to answer

Rep. Rick Berg, a candidate for North Dakota’s open Senate seat, was recently asked a straightforward question: “What’s the state’s minimum wage?” He didn’t know the answer—and he’s far from alone.

The Huffington Post points out that four candidates at a recent Senate debate in Missouri also didn’t know the minimum wage. And that’s surprising, considering that this is a perennial question that trips up candidates in virtually every election cycle.

So today, I’m offering all campaigns and candidates a free prep sheet to help them avoid these obvious errors.

Here are 10 questions you should be prepared to answer during your race:

1. What’s the minimum wage? The federal minimum wage is $7.25. Some states are higher. The full list is here. Candidates should also be able to answer similar questions about their state’s unemployment and home foreclosure rates. Here’s Rep. Berg’s attempt at answering the minimum wage question:



2. What’s the price of milk? Reporters ask these types of questions to gauge how much a candidate understands the struggles of “real” Americans. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a gallon costs $3.50. (A handy list of other product costs is here.)

3. What’s the price of bread? The average price of a loaf of white bread is $1.40.

4. How much Is a gallon of gas? The national average for a gallon of unleaded regular gas is $3.87. That’s up from $3.55 last year, $2.78 in 2010, and $1.95 in 2009. Candidates can accurately say that the price has doubled in the past three years. Also know your state/local gas price averages.

5. Why do you want to be a congressman/senator/governor? You’d be surprised how many people blow this simple question. In fact, that very question derailed Ted Kennedy’s presidential bid in 1980.

6. What mistake(s) have you made, and what have you learned from it (them)? This question is sometimes intended as a “gotcha,” but can be a perfect opportunity for candidates to explain a position change.

7. Who Is your favorite Supreme Court Justice of all time, and why? Candidates should also be able to name a decision they agreed with and one they disagreed with. In recent years, these types of questions have tripped up both Christine O’Donnell and Sarah Palin.

8. When Is the last time the (local sports team) won the championship/pennant/World Series/Stanley Cup? During a Democratic debate for Massachusetts Senate late last year, four candidates, including Elizabeth Warren, couldn’t list the years their beloved Boston Red Sox had won the World Series in this century. Candidates should also have similar answers ready for local college teams, and should be able to name their favorite players, as well.



9. Who is your personal hero? This is a cliché question which typically elicits cliché answers. But unless Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, or Eleanor Roosevelt are truly your personal heroes, try to come up with something more original and more revealing about who you are and what moves you.

10. What newspapers do you read? After Sarah Palin’s disastrous handling of this question from Katie Couric, other candidates can expect similar questions. Be ready to name your favorite journalists, newspapers, radio stations, news programs, and websites.



Brad Phillips is the author of the Mr. Media Training Blog, where a version of this story first appeared. His firm, Phillips Media Relations, specializes in media and presentation training. He tweets at @MrMediaTraining.

Four Strategies for Staying Relevant

A serious threat facing most brands in dynamic markets is the loss of relevance because the category or subcategory they are serving is declining. Customers are no longer buying what the brand is perceived to make. New categories or subcategories emerge as competitors' innovations create "must haves." This dynamic can happen even if the brand is strong; customers are loyal; and the offering has never been better, thanks to incremental innovations.
Relevance dominates. If a group of customers wants a battery powered car it does not matter how much they love your hybrid brand. It will not be relevant. A newspaper can have the best new coverage and editorial staff, but if readers are diverted to cable news or blogs, relevance will decline. The ultimate tragedy is to achieve brilliant differentiation, winning the preference battle, only to have that effort wasted as its relevance declines.
How does a brand stay relevant? How can a brand avoid the disinvest or milking decision? There are four strategies that can work.
1. Gain parity. The goal is to create a close-enough option to a competitor's "must have." Several of the fast-food brands introduced menus items like salads and fruit smoothies designed to be "good enough" for the the healthy-eating segment. McDonald's, facing a threat from Starbucks to their breakfast and other off-hours business, introduced the McCafe line, close enough with respect to coffee quality to escape exclusion by many customers.
One challenge facing the parity options is that the brand may be perceived to lack credibility in the new area. Another is that that it might be difficult to actually deliver on the promise, given that the culture, assets, and skills of the operation were not designed to support the parity initiative.
2. Leapfrog the innovation. Instead of being satisfied with being relegated to having a parity product, a firm could attempt to take over the new category or subcategory or at least to become a significant player with a substantial or transformational innovation that leapfrogs the competitor. Nike with its Nike + shoes and iPod Sensor allows a runner to hear music plus keep track of each workout. The adidas miCoach also provides a way to monitor and link each workout to a computer but it has an active forum, the ability to create a program design to fit a sport and goals, and even a contact to trainers who can design customized programs. Cisco has frequently filled gaps in its product line with an acquisition. They then added Cisco-driven synergy and systems benefits creating a leapfrog result.
The leapfrog strategy represents a formidable challenge because substantial or transformational innovation is needed and because getting established in a marketplace where a competitor likely has scale and momentum will be difficult.
3. Reposition. Modify and reposition the brand so that its value proposition becomes more relevant given the market dynamics. Madonna has had several transformations through the years to maintain her relevance. L.L. Bean, built on a heritage of hunting, fishing, and camping, repositioned itself as a broader outdoor firm relevant to the interests of outdoor enthusiasts such as hikers, mountain bikers, cross-country skiers, and water-sports enthusiasts. The outdoors was still treated with the same sense of awe, respect, and adventure but from a different perspective.
The challenge is to have enough substance to earn credibility in the new position and to implement the rebranding strategy as well. Madonna and L.L. Bean had to live the new position and provide benefits that were relevant.
4. Stick to your knitting. Rather than adapting, keep pursuing the same strategy with the same value proposition but just do it better, keep improving, and create brand energy. The safety razor, for example, was threatened in the 1930s with the introduction of the electric shaver and its compelling benefits. However, an incredible stream of innovations from Gillette allowed it to beat back the new category and enjoy robust growth. In-N-Out Burger, a chain in the western United States that has developed intense loyalty with a menu of burgers, fries, and shakes, has made no effort to adjust to the healthy trend. It simply continues to deliver the same menu with uncompromising quality, consistency, and service under the assumption that a worthwhile segment has ignored the healthy tread and another will indulge periodically.
The risk of the stick-to-your-knitting strategy is that the new category or subcategory might be based on such a strong trend or such a compelling set of benefits that avoiding it might prove futile and even disastrous.
The selection of the optimal response will be context specific, but it will involve two questions. What is size of the relevance threat and its supporting trend? And what is a realistic judgment about the firm's ability to innovate, add needed capabilities, and be successful in the marketplace? Complexities, interactions, and future uncertainties make them tough questions to answer but a loss of relevance is tougher still.

How to start measuring social media (even if you hate math)

One of the reasons most of us went into communications or journalism is because we don't like numbers. Statistics and calculus and derivatives? No, thank you.

We've always gotten away with "measuring" our results in terms of media impressions, reach, and advertising equivalencies. After all, it's hard to quantify brand awareness, credibility, reputation, and thought leadership. You know whether or not you have it, but you can't really put it in terms of numbers.

And those great big impression numbers? They feel good to a CEO who is looking for some way to show a return on you efforts.

But when the Web disrupted our industry we slowly began to see new and interesting ways to measure our efforts. Early on we looked at using unique URLs in our news releases and different 800 numbers at our events. But that wasn't enough.

The Web has provided a huge opportunity to measure our results directly to business goals, yet most of us still shy away.

Why? Because we don't like numbers.

We'd like you to think about it differently. Call it data or information or goodies or, heck, call it chocolate. Just don't call it numbers.

It's fun to see results from your efforts—and now you have the opportunity to see them every day.

Start small. One of the things we discuss in "Marketing in the Round" is using a benchmark of zero as your first step. Find something—one campaign, one event, one project—and create the benchmarks, the dashboard, and the data points you'll measure. Think beyond traffic, page views, and bounce rate. Think about what the goals are of the business and how you can affect change in those areas.

In a for-profit business, you'll want to look for ways to increase revenues, shorten the sales cycle, or improve margins. If you don't know what all three of those things mean, go make friends with someone in the accounting department and learn it. Quickly.

Let's use Pinterest as an example. It's easy to set up some boards and direct people back to your website or blog. Arment Dietrich has a client—Frank and Eileen—that makes high-end men's and women's shirts. The team created a Pinterest board for the company to test what kinds of results could be achieved by pinning images of some of its shirts.

After only one month, Pinterest is the No. 8 referral source of traffic to the Frank and Eileen site. But remember, we said to worry less about traffic and more on business results. So dig further. Pinterest sent 3 percent new visitors in April. Of that three percent, 83 percent bought a shirt. That represents $2,670 in new revenue for the business.

Other than the 83 percent who bought the shirt, all of the data for that particular test came from Google Analytics (which is free). The client also granted access to the e-commerce site, which provides the information needed to find out how many of the visitors from Pinterest bought a shirt.

This is a simple way to look at measurement, but it gives you a starting point. Once you get this down, you can begin to advance and become more sophisticated in your measurement.

Companies that fully understand how they are being talked about and what levers work online can use this data to inform future marketing decisions. Strategic intelligence gleaned from measurement can help uncover new opportunities for products and services, as well.

Your clients or executive team will be ecstatic to finally have a real return on investment on your efforts.

Gini Dietrich is the founder and CEO of Arment Dietrich, a Chicago-based integrated marketing communication firm. She also is the founder of the professional development site for PR and marketing pros, Spin Sucks Pro, blogger at Spin Sucks, and co-author of "Marketing in the Round."

Geoff Livingston is an author and marketing strategist, and serves as vice president, strategic partnerships for Razoo. A former journalist, Livingston continues to write, and most recently he co-authored "Marketing in the Round," and authored the social media primer Welcome to the Fifth Estate.

By Gini Dietrich and Geoff Livingston | Posted: May 13, 2012