NEW MARKETING APPROACHES AT INFORMATION EXPERTS, INC.

Article by Herb Rubenstein
CEO, Herb Rubenstein Consulting

INTRODUCTION

Information Experts, Inc. is a seven year old education and communications company where instructional design specialists team with multimedia and website design gurus to build learning platforms, web based communication structures, educational programs and websites. The marketing approach used by Information Experts, Inc. has been to hire marketing and sales reps to complement the sales skills of its founder, Marissa Levin. In January, 2003 Information Experts launched a new sales and marketing effort to show the strength of its flagship service – integrated communications.

INTEGRATED COMMUNICATIONS

The essence of “integrated communications is that a company or non-profit will benefit from having its core messages be consistent whether it is talking with customers, conducting internal training and education, talking with the media and other PR outlets and communicating with its employees on a regular basis. While this sounds simple, when a company has numerous divisions, some brought it by merger with their own cultures, then employees have their separate “P&L” responsibilities and when many different vendors create their training programs, PR campaigns, press releases, employee newsletters and other forms of communication, each vendor will try to outdo and outdesign the previous vendor, even if the “vendor” is an internal marketing or training department. With everyone trying to outdo the previous form and content of a company’s message, it almost invariably becomes a hodgepodge and no consistent theme can emerge.

It took Dell months of internal meetings to come up with “Easy As Dell” and this is a consistent message for marketing, but workers at Dell will tell you that their work is no easier and the communication flow to workers does not reflect an “easy as Dell” anything. Times are hard at Dell.

INFORMATION EXPERTS’ OWN VERSION OF INTEGRATED COMMUNICATIONS

Originally Information Experts, Inc.’s theme was “smart, compelling information design.” It hired the best graphic gurus and was successful in working with clients in not only producing information and educational programs, but also in developing robust strategies for content, rollout and measurement of results.

Then Information Experts, Inc. became IE with its no logo and the mantra of integrated corporate communications took hold. New language such as “mergecom” gripped the landscape and IE soon sought to become the voice for companies in their branding efforts, in their marketing communications, in their internal communications and in their PR efforts. With this launch IE was faced with an interesting dilemma. How could IE bring internal communications inside IE so that IE it
followed its own mandate. The unique process was three fold. First, redesign its mission and vision statements and recommit to employee development even in the face of a down economy. Second, begin to write articles so that its staff was called upon to articulate and communicate the great contributions there were making every day to the improvement in their clients’ lives and ultimately in the lives of everyone in their entire industry. Third, communications is about getting the word out. So, in order to assure that IE’s employees began to leave the luxury and comforts of their offices and get out into the community, IE cut the temperature of its office to 55 degrees in mid January and froze their employees into submission to this new doctrine.

Conclusion

Integrated communications now has been taken to a new level. It’s not just what you say or communicate, it’s what you do that counts. Now IE sales personnel can’t wait until their next appointment out of the office. The President even decided to reshape his entire job position to include 20 hours a week on sales just to get into the warmer confines of potential clients. Integrated communications is now at a new level at Information Experts where words and deeds are mutually reinforcing. To learn more directly from the company visit IE on the web at www.informationexperts.com or put on long underwear and visit their office on Victory Lane in Herndon, Virginia.

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