Graeme Thickins on Tech

Reflections & analysis about innovation, technology, startups, investing, healthcare, and more .... with a focus on Minnesota, Land of 10,000 Lakes. Blogging continuously since 2005.

Category: Marketing/Branding/PR (Page 1 of 29)

MN Entrepreneurs and the Fortune 500 – A Look Back to One of My Favorite Posts

February 17, 2025 / / 0 Comments

graphic showing the state map of Minnesota with the words Fortune 500 over itI’ve been writing about Minnesota startup founders for a long time. I can’t remember the first post I wrote about one — probably sometime in 2006. But I do know I’ve penned innumerable such posts over the years. One of my favorite recurring subjects was Robert Stephens, founder of The Geek Squad. I did a search recently to unearth just how many times I wrote about him. It was twelve! Yes, that many posts about just one of our state’s many successful tech founders! Why?  I guess because he was such a fascinating and quotable guy — and of course because I admired his success. Some of my posts about Robert were lengthy features, while others just mentioned his participation in certain local events. Here’s my list of all those posts.

What does Robert have to do with the Fortune 500? His firm was acquired by one: Best Buy. Which you surely know if you live here. And both firms were, of course, founded right here in Minnesota. The significance of his acquisition cannot be overstated: it became the basis of a massive services business for Best Buy, which continues to this day.

My favorite post about Robert was headlined and dated thusly:

text of the headline of Graeme's favorite post about Robert Stephens

Why does this one stand out for me? Because it isn’t just about one of my favorite founders, but also one of my favorite topics: branding. I re-discovered what a great read it was (if I do say so myself!) when I went back to it after so many years. (Warning, it’s a long one.) The full post is here.

Speaking of Fortune 500 firms here in Minnesota… some years after the above, I wrote a commissioned piece on this topic: “Minnesota Has Long Had a High Per-Capita of Fortune 500s. How’s That Working Out?” I didn’t write about Best Buy in that one, but I did quote at least one other Minnesota founder, whose firm was acquired by a Fortune 500 — for close to a billion dollars.

Recently, I was reminded that I only focused on Twin Cities-based Fortune 500s when I wrote that article. How could I have forgotten an out-state Fortune 500: Fastenal, founded and based in Winona MN to this day.. No, it isn’t a very high-tech company, but what an amazing growth story it has been over the years! The recent passing of its iconic founder and CEO, Bob Kierlin, reminded us all of that. I just posted on LinkedIn about him. Some of his very wise words were included there.

The lesson in all of this? Minnesota grows some great ones!

 

A Great Way to ‘AI Enhance’ Your Headshots

February 11, 2024 / / 0 Comments

It’s no secret there are far too many really bad headshots all over LinkedIn, and everywhere else online for that matter.  Wouldn’t it be great if something came along to help us normal people solve that problem? Talk about a huge market opportunity! Well, something did — and you can probably guess it would be… yes, we can thank our favorite new friend, AI.

Specifically, a startup called The Multiverse AI  has brought us what they describe as an “AI Headshot Generator” that lets you “turn your selfies into professional headshots” to “boost your professional image.”  Who can’t use some of that in this day and age of… yes, friends, I’m going to say it: Personal Branding. Some examples provided by The Multiverse AI are shown here (click the image to enlarge). some examples of AI enhanced headshots

Actually, it doesn’t have to be just selfies you submit — it can be any photos that include you, by cropping into those images to show just your head and shoulders. I know, I got to test it, and I don’t think any of mine were selfies. I hardly ever shoot a selfie! But I have lots of photos that include me. (Those cropped sections, however, have to be a minimum of 512 x 512 pixels, which was a bit of a challenge for me.)

If you follow my blog, you’ve seen me write about this topic of headshots since AI became such a hot thing in 2022 — namely, in the following two posts.

Generative AI Made Me Do it

I Couldn’t Help Myself – I Did It Again

But that was about avatars, which was sort of a plaything for a while — and I created a bunch with an app called Lensa. I sure had fun with it! This new service from The Multiverse AI, however, is a big step up from that, because it produces photo-realistic images that don’t look fake,  or created by… a bot?

How Good Is It?

Well, ta-dah — I’m debuting my favorite new headshot, courtesy of my experience with The Multiverse, right here on my blog today. It’s the one in the upper right under “About Graeme.” That image replaces the one I’ve had there for more years than I can remember. So, kudos to The Multiverse for finally getting me to update that old one!

And here’s a much larger image of all the best ones I got back after my submission, so you can see the variety their service produces. (Click to enlarge.) 12 headshot images of Graeme Thickins

So, What’s the Story on This Startup?

I learned it was launched on Product Hunt back in September 2023, with good success. Who’s behind it? Well, three cofounders you can see here. And a hat-tip to Tanya, who found me on LinkedIn and requested a connection. I thought it sounded interesting, so I took her up on it. Glad I did!

By the way, another interesting way to use The Multiverse — also a much-needed service — is to create AI-generated professional headshots for your team. There are so many startups — and for that matter, larger companies — who have horribly inconsistent headshots of their teams, or their executive lineup, Well, here’s a way to fix that. Yay! I’ll be recommending it — or using it myself for certain clients.

So… how’s your headshot?

Who Made the List of ‘The 120 Top People in Minnesota Tech on Twitter’?

January 13, 2021 / / 0 Comments

Well, for one, me! A Google Alert showed up the other day on my name. It was for a post published on Webbiquity, the blog of a fellow named Tom Pick here in the Twin Cities. Gee, thanks, Tom! My profile pic was even featured in his graphic… the only one shot on a beach, I might add — haha! (By the way, the list is alphabetical, so I’m way down toward the end of the list.)

some of the people of the 'Top 120' list

I’ve known Tom for some years, being in the same general business (marketing). He’s an accomplished B2B marketing consultant and strategist. And he’s been blogging about as long as I have — maybe longer. I officially started writing a blog (meaning on an actual blogging platform) in 2005.  I’m now up to 690 posts! But Tom seems much more serious about his blog. He even has ads! So, maybe he’s making some money from it.

Tom was also early to jump on Twitter, probably about the time I did — in 2007. I resisted starting to tweet in 2006, after the much-hyped launch of Twitter at SXSW in March of 2006. But, several months later, I couldn’t resist “micro-blogging” any longer, so I gave in to the temptation in early 2007. Fast forward, I’m now well beyond 35,000 tweets — and I just can’t stop, haha!  (By the way, have you noticed that Twitter recently dropped that stat on all its user profiles? Why?? That’s too bad.)

Anyway, Tom did an admirable job — I’m sure that compiling the list was a lot of work. (And I thanked him.) I thought it was kinda strange that several people on the list had only 2 or 3 tweets in the last 90+ days… are you kidding? But not to judge here — hey, maybe those tweets were really, REALLY good ones? But I think about 10 or more of us were  listed as having 100+ tweets in the past 90 days. And I know for me it would have been more like 200. Just sayin’! Of course, sharing content of value is what I think Twitter his all about, and that’s really all I try to do.

Tom explains his methodology in his blog post (linked above). He had to walk a fine line and not make anyone mad — including some people he felt a need to mention, even though they aren’t very active on Twitter(??).  Maybe they like Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn  better? Or even Pinterest? Or they’re dancing on TikTok. Each to his own, I guess.

I will say that a lot of us active Twitter users on Tom’s list are very active on LinkedIn as well. In my case, I joined in August 2003 when there were only 18,000 of us there. Now, there are more than 700 million!

Another good thing Tom did in compiling his Twitter list: he left out those who are tweeting a lot about politics. Good call, Tom!

I Say a New Web Site Every 20 Years — Whether You Need It or Not!

September 8, 2016 / / 3 Comments

Yes, these are the words I live by. Actually, it was 21 years that I had the same basic web site for my consulting business, before I launched a new site just recently. It’s at my original domain name, gtamarketing.com. (Please tell me what you think of it in the comments below!)

You can see screenshots of the old vs. the new below. Pretty stark comparison, huh? I kid you not: my old site had a footer that read “©Copyright 1995-2016.” It lived a long life! I launched it in early 1995 when I began working  with my first Internet client, Creative Internet Solutions (later acquired), a relationship that actually began in late 1994. The first popular browser, Netscape, was just being launched. Oh, I updated the content many, many times over the years, of course — often adding pages here and there, and unlinking others when they became dated or no longer seemed relevant. But the site used the same, basic, plain-HTML structure for all those years. I built every bit of it myself originally and ongoing — and managed the hosting and did all the maintenance and updating all by my lonesome, too. (Yes, I know how to code — haha — but don’t ask me anything beyond HTML!) 

BEFORE: my 21-year-old web site.

BEFORE: my 21-year-old web site.

For some reason, I never got around to creating a new mobile/responsive site during recent years — even though I knew I should have. It’s the “cobbler’s kids with no shoes” syndrome: I helped many clients create modern new sites during this time, but never had time to do my own! It just wasn’t a high priority — alas, clients must always come first.

AFTER: my brand-new, mobile responsive web site.

AFTER: my brand-new, mobile responsive web site.

Continue reading

The State — or Lack of a State — of Marketing Analytics

September 11, 2015 / / 2 Comments
©VentureBeat-MktgAnalytics

Image @VentureBeat

How does one assess the landscape for an exploding technology category like marketing analytics? There’s so much confusion and hype around the topic. You’ve heard it all — too much data, we’re drowning in it, woe is us. And, along with that, too many vendors trying to sell us the latest cure. First we were shocked to hear the number of vendors was 1000, now we’re told it’s 2000! The argument that all these vendors create too many data silos is now a refrain we’re hearing more often. Hard to argue with that.

With such high numbers of players comes confusion, and complexity.

But it begs the question: how in the world do you unify all your marketing data to understand it and gain a competitive edge for your organization? Will a platform or single vendor solution emerge? Some of the big players like Oracle, Adobe, and Salesforce are certainly trying, opting in a big way for buy vs. build. (These three have led a frenzy of acquisitions in the marketing technology space.)

Yet significant roadblocks still exist to widespread adoption of marketing analytics in business today — and for companies to extract real value from it. The lack of data science skills we’ve all heard about by now till we’re blue in the face — it’s the “sexiest job title in the country,” blah blah blah. Big shortages, universities scrambling to launch graduate programs, etc, etc. But should  this technology really require a PhD in every marketing department and agency in the land? That simply doesn’t compute! Why can’t there be more solutions, more tools, that marketers and general business folks — regular Joes and Janes — can use? Why does it all have to be so complex?  Continue reading

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