On Monday we will welcome 6 companies to the program, 3 of which will be relocating for The Brandery.  Those accepted include:

• Brainrack: Founded by Senay Semere, Pepjin de Visscher and Matthew Veryser of Dayton, OH, Brainrack is a crowd-sourcing tool for organizations and for students to use while engaging in open innovation
• DCreations: Founded by Darcy Crociata of Mason, OH, the company has created an application called Facebook EasyBook that creates photo/journal/scrapbooks taken from your Facebook statuses, mobile uploads, photo albums, etc., to help capture important memories that could otherwise be fleeting.
• Giftiki: Founded by Justin Stanislaw and Bryan Jowers of Houston, TX, Giftiki allows users to conveniently give small gifts digitally to friends and family.
• turboBOTZ: Founded by Vincent Chou and Pratap Sherquill of Chicago, IL,  turboBOTZ is a service that allows video gamers to manage their game libraries as well as to buy, sell and trade video games, all within a single online site.
• VenturePax: Founded by Danny Stull of West Chester, OH, VenturePax is a Web-based source of information-sharing on outdoor adventures, travel and vacation planning with strong interactivity and family oriented locations.
• VenueAgent: Founded by Jocelyn and Joe Cates, VenueAgent is the first Brandery Fellow of the program.   VenueAgent.com is a researching tool for planning any special event, connecting venues with qualified leads, and helping brides find love at first site.

The next 12 weeks are going to be pretty exciting and I personally cant wait to see the progress the companies have made by Demo Day on November 19th.  If you want to follow the progress, be sure to check out The Brandery on Twitter and Facebook.   We’ll also be updating throughout the program on The Brandery blog.

“Before if you were making a product, the right business strategy was to put 70% of your attention, energy, and dollars into shouting about a product, and 30% into making a great product. So you could win with a mediocre product, if you were a good enough marketer. That is getting harder to do. The balance of power is shifting toward consumers and away from companies…the individual is empowered… The right way to respond to this if you are a company is to put the vast majority of your energy, attention and dollars into building a great product or service and put a smaller amount into shouting about it, marketing it. If I build a great product or service, my customers will tell each other.” – Jeff Bezos

“One of the easiest things to do to make yourself standout within the digital world is to hit a homerun with the design and experience.  If you invest significantly in this area, then you are going to standout from all the rest.” – Darren Herman

Darren is the Chief Digital Media Office at Kirshenbaum Bond Senecal + Partners and one of those guys that just plain “gets it.”  He wrote the above quote when talking about why Flipboard is suddenly the hot start-up of the week in the media world.  Ironically it is a sentiment that I was just discussing yesterday with a VC in NYC as it relates to the power of branding in the digital media.

Not enough companies in the digital world invest behind design, branding and experience.  In many ways, Google won the search war because its simplistic design made it stand out from crowded search portals.  The same goes for Facebook, a company that spends a disproportionate focus on user experience.

The full press release is listed below.  For more information, please “like” us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, and check out our site at http://brandery.org Applications close on August 11th so if you know of any companies who would be interested, please encourage them to apply today.

Consumer marketing execs launch nonprofit startup accelerator

CINCINNATI (July 19, 2010) – Cincinnati digital marketing executive David Knox and serial entrepreneur J.B. Kropp have teamed up to launch the region’s first startup company accelerator, a nonprofit organization called The Brandery that will package funding, mentoring and partnerships around local entrepreneurs to help grow consumer marketing businesses here.
Knox, brand manager of global branded entertainment at Procter & Gamble, and Kropp, vice president of channel development at Vitrue who also has been integral in launching six startup companies, joined with Taft Stettinius & Hollister attorney Rob McDonald to create The Brandery. The name, coined by Brandery mentor and P&G brand manager Bryan Radtke, was designed to convey both the consumer marketing/branding focus as well as the idea of generating new companies.

“The power of The Brandery is the collaboration between people and companies in our community,” says Knox. “Entrepreneurs will benefit from a wide range of talented people in consumer marketing here as well as globally.”
The Brandery is looking for consumer-facing businesses such as consumer Internet, media and entertainment companies, based on technology platforms.

The 12-week program will include a structured curriculum that includes seed investment, industry leader mentors and access to top talent in the industry.

About 30 mentors will participate, ranging from local experts such as Bob Gilbreath, Bridge Worldwide’s chief marketing strategist and Pete Blackshaw, executive vice-president of Nielsen Online Digital Strategic Services to high-profile entrepreneurs such as Wendy Lea, CEO of Silicon Valley startup Get Satisfaction. (Click here for a full list: http://brandery.org/mentors/)

Each company that is selected through a review process will receive a $20,000 grant in exchange for equity in the company. As part of their participation, each company also will receive brand identity guidance from leading agencies including LPK, Resource Interactive, Barefoot Proximity, Empower MediaMarketing and Ample.

Companies can begin applying immediately at Brandery.org. Deadline for submissions for this first session is Aug. 11, 2010. Five companies will be selected for the first session, which will begin in late August.

The $20,000 company grants will come from CincyTech, a public-private venture development group that invests in high-tech startup companies. CincyTech is using its Imagining Grant funds, which are aimed at growing companies to the point where they are investable. “Our hope is to create a whole new pipeline of startup companies that focus on consumer marketing, to complement our portfolio of companies in information technology, bioscience and advanced manufacturing,” said CincyTech President Bob Coy. “Our mission is to grow jobs in thriving industries.”
In addition to CincyTech and the five creative agencies, support is coming from the Haile/U.S. Bank Foundation, the Greater Cincinnati Foundation, and Xavier University’s Williams College of Business, which donated money for operating capital for The Brandery, a 501c3. The Brandery also is endorsed and supported by the Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber, Queen City Angels, Hamilton County Development Corp., and other local entrepreneurial organizations.

The Brandery was modeled after TechStars in Boulder, CO.; Y: Combinator in Silicon Valley; and Capital Factory in Austin, Texas; among others. However, while most of the others focus on scalable technology and Web-service startups, The Brandery is the first to focus exclusively on consumer marketing, Kropp said.

The strategy fits well with Cincinnati’s positioning as a national Consumer Marketing Hub through the Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber’s Agenda 360 regional action plan.

The Brandery will serve as the region’s incubator for consumer marketing companies as promised in the Agenda 360 Consumer Marketing Center and Ohio Hub of Innovation plans, said Rich Kiley, who is serving as head of the Consumer Marketing Center for the Chamber. “The Brandery is an innovative way to leverage the competencies uniquely available in this region,” said Jerry Kathman, CEO of LPK. “This will burnish our region’s reputation for brand-building excellence.”

Now the Old Spice team has dialed it up through a stellar social media campaign that takes engagement to a whole new level.  Lots of brands have used Twitter as a way to have a dialogue with consumers.  But in what I think is a first, Old Spice is actually doing a YouTube video response to people who mention the Old Spice campaign on Twitter.  Even better, the video responses actually have Isaiah Mustafa responding in character in the video.  So far celebs like @TheEllenShow, @ApoloOhno and @KevinRose have been lucky enough to receive responses.    My personal favorite has to be the response to @TheEllenShow [embedded video below]

Old Spice Responds to @TheEllenShow

Disclaimer – I work at P&G, which owns the Old Spice brand.  But it is still a really cool digital marketing campaign.

How many times have you been in a meeting where the sole purpose is for someone to deliver a presentation or pitch?  It could be your agency presenting a new creative idea.  Or perhaps its a start-up that is presenting why you should do business with them.

Or maybe you have even been the one giving the presentation?

The common fact with all of these is that in most cases, a presentation is a Hail Mary pass.  If you are just simply giving a one-way pitch, you are giving the audience two choices at the end….to say yes or to say no.  And the worst part about most presentations is that you have no idea which of those two choices the decision maker is going to make.

Some people love the thrill of the presentation, of trying to close the sale.  But business should not be a sport for thrill seekers.  Its not good business to have hold your breath and hope a decision goes your way.

To continue with the sports analogies, you should try to make your presentations a lay-up, instead of a Hail Mary pass.  Make the  presentation a formality where you know that the deal is closed before you even flip through your first slide.  Work with the decision makers in advance so they feel bought into the work.  Enroll your client in the process so they feel the same sense of ownership as you have.  Devote as much time to making the decision an easy one as you spend making the presentation look / sound good.

Delivering a great presentation is an important skill in business (Steve Jobs has shown us that).  But an even more important skill is being able to make the sale before the presentation even begins.