SNP Communications

Virgin America is Awesome….

By Dave Imperiale

Virgin America is Awesome….

…if you’re a teenage girl from Eastern Europe and you’ve never been on an airplane before.

When I step foot onto a plane all I ask for are general feelings of safety and comfort. While other airlines aren’t always successful in providing those sentiments, I also don’t feel like I’ve been dosed before walking into a club. I don’t want to be enclosed in an aircraft where the predominant lighting is neon and the choice of music is House. “Trippy” is not the experience I’m looking for.

This feeling becomes even more prevalent when VA presses play on their psychedelic cartoon version of a safety video.

At first I was hopeful – a fresh interpretation of a universally futile message. But about ten seconds in it starts to feel like Ralph Steadman was commissioned to scare the sh*t out of you before takeoff. Please watch it, and imagine you’re on the plane. My personal highlights: (more…)

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Times Like These

By Renn Vara

One of our long time customers speaks passionately about how times like these create the opportunity for firms to take market share. His point is that when facing financial hits, most companies naturally adopt the bunker mentality and pull back. That means that those companies which do the opposite can take ground much like pulling on a rope in a classic tug of war. So here’s what we’re doing in the next few weeks:

1. We’re meeting with each of our customers to find out how this financial crisis is impacting their business and how we can help. In the past, we’ve been able to keep projects going through creative options. We’re good at it.

2. We’ve targeted a number of prospective customers to introduce them to SNP and our services. The whole SNP team is getting involved. The point is to help them get their work done during these difficult times.

3. We’re aggressively meeting with other firms like ours to discuss partnership ideas so we can better serve all of our customers. Finding ways to package solutions to eliminate duplication helps. It’s what we do.

You get the idea. Along with this, we’re increasing our commitment to sales and sales people. Time to take some ground. What about you and your team? Let us know. But don’t tell bunker-mentality competitors what you’re doing. Who reads blogs anyway?

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Know Your Place

By Renn Vara

Today I had a minor epiphany.  It’s been a week of sales and customer meetings, which I really enjoy.  Different personalities and business needs and challenges.  All levels of responsibility from directors to senior VPs, even a CEO or two.  On one plane ride back to San Francisco, I thought about my role in all this.  Where’s my place?  I didn’t come up with an answer but it got me thinking:

1. I don’t like working with business people who are political.  For that matter, I don’t like political people who treat politics like business.
2. I like people who focus on their job rather than focusing on their next job.
3. I like to be of value and hate when I’m not.
4. I like being busy doing cool stuff and helping people be successful.
5. I’m not very good at office work, finding that I’m better meeting and working with customers and potential customers. (more…)

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Holy Cow!

By Renn Vara

With yesterday’s financial news, I’m having déjà-vu all over again. Could it be that we’re facing another drastic fall out in the current business cycle? Having been here to some degree a few times in the past, let me steal some unattributed quotes as a guide for getting through the next few months. (more…)

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