Benjamin Cruz

Hello and welcome to information about Benjamin Cruz's educational background. 

Benjamin Cruz earned a Master's degree in International Management (MIM) from The Thunderbird School of Global Management. Those who have not been deeply engaged in international business, probably are not familiar with Thunderbird. However, company CEOs as well as the VPs of International most certainly know it well. Thunderbird is consistently ranked the #1 school in the US for post-graduate education in international business by US World Report, Financial Times, and the Wall Street Journal.

At Thunderbird, Ben Cruz concentrated on global marketing and, particularly, doing business in Latin America. He gained a high level of proficiency in written and spoken Spanish for business.

Benjamin Cruz also holds a BS in American Studies with a minor in Economics from Northern Arizona University. He started out majoring in Environmental Science but came to realize that he would most likely spend his career in a laboratory juggling test tubes and pipettes and conducting atomic absorbtion spectroscopy analyses - not at all the romantic notion he had held upon enrolling. After taking a year off to "find himself", he determined to get a more broadly-based education to gain an understanding of what drives American culture, politics, and economics. His International Economics professor took him aside one day and told him that his grasp of the subject was uncommon - had he ever considered a Master's degree in International Business? Thunderbird was the ticket!

Ben Cruz is a lifelong learner. While most of his search for advanced knowledge centers on business topics and digital and social media, he has also taken courses in web development - HTML, CSS, javascript, and how to build a search engine.

In today's issue of Marketing Daily (MediaPost), Tanya Irwin summarized key findings from The Chief Marketing Officer Council's recently released report "The Variance in the Social Brand Experience".  It seems things have not changed much over the last year - most brands still are not fully invested in social media. They are not staffing adequately to properly manage and grow engagement on the part of consumers and social media still is not fully integrated into their marketing mix. 

Counting only Facebook and twitter, the average number of followers of the brands surveyed is over 235,000 yet the average number of social media staff at the brands is only 3. 67% of respondents seem to recognize the staffing issue particularly given the fact that 80% of the brands have moved social media upward in importance as a marketing channel.

I've been uncomfortable with the notion that social media is primarily a communication channel whose intent is to stimulate consumer engagement with the ultimate goals of brand awareness, affinity, and preference. Most brands would like to convert these "leads" into buyers but, without full integration into the marketing mix, social media strategy will necessarily lack the budget and mechanisms for conversion tactics.

Consumers who "like" or "follow" a brand do so for a variety of reasons but it seems to me no surprise that the most important of these is the expectation of being entitled to special offers from the brand. I expect that the growing awareness and participation in daily deal sites like Groupon and LivingSocial have contributed to this expectation and will heighten it over time. 

"The top expectation that comes with a “like” is to be eligible for exclusive offers..."

The ability to provide promotional offers relies heavily on social media being part of a brand's overarching marketing strategy rather than being viewed as a unique and separate channel whose strategy and resources - operating and promotional budget, technical needs and e-commerce / customer support - are distinct from the rest of marketing. As long as this disconnect persists, brands will not be in a position to leverage social media as a promotional channel (as distinct from brand building) which converts followers into continually engaged, repeat customers. 

OK, aside from using social media to make discounts and other promotions available to followers, tracking social media to point-of-purchase is difficult so conversion to a sale stimulated by social media conversations is difficult to track - I think most would agree. But brand awareness and brand affinity - which are hard to trace back to any specific marketing tactic, program or campaign - has been a mainstay of social media's reputation as a marketing tool.

Clearly Ken is a Contrarian in this respect. And, as Managing Editor of a premier marketing publication, his words make people sit up and take notice.

Put simply, conversation cannot build a traditional brand. It might build a personal brand, but when it comes to dishwashers, automobiles and soaps, no. Talking won't do it. Only solid products and smart marketing will. 

Below his blog post, Ken provides social media very subtle respect as part of a fully integrated marketing program. But not everyone sees reader comments. Thus, most will be left with just the negative tone of the post itself. 

Social conversations won't compel a reader to purchase a brand's goods or services, he asserts. But he doesn't suggest, by contrast, that any other single marketing practice will do so. Yet the reader is left with the notion that conversations about a brand are of little value in comparison to other vehicles.

Ken mentions "conversational [social media] crises", suggesting in the most subtle way that engaging in conversations with consumers to extinguish such brush fires is one way brands can (should?) use social media. The examples he provides of what caused a couple of such crises shows that they were, in fact, caused by missteps by brands in the use of other [traditional] means marketing communication. But he stops short of making it clear that brands must engage in conversations with consumers because consumers will be talking about your brand - postively or negatively - whether or not you are part of the dialogue.

I have to wonder whether it is viewed as being in the interest of Advertising Age to devalue social media. There are few vehicles for marketers to stay abreast of trends, new techniques and practices in traditional marketing. Advertising Age is an 800-pound gorilla in that respect. But there are hundreds of vehicles through which to learn about those same aspects of social media including the conversations taking place within social media itself. Ad Age has no chance of dominance in that arena. So maybe it is in their own self-interest to cast doubt on the effectiveness of social media as an amplifier of a brand's voice and image.

What do you think?

This morning I found myself in the conference room at Baltimore's Emerging Technology Center listening to Jonathan Perrelli, General Partner of Fortify.vc introduce his firm and answer questions about raising financing put to him by some 25 entrepreneurs from around the region. Why was I - a job seeker - in a room full of entrepreneurs? That would be because I miss the excitement of the startup. I miss the kind of people who take big risks and who attempt to chart their own path - people with a vision that was not handed down to them in whole or in part and who are inspired to build a business by solving a problem (or two, or three at the same time). It energizes me being around them, exchanging ideas and stories. It provides me a sense of value derived from the advice and perspective I can give them (and the sense of one's own value erodes slowly over weeks of job hunting). Most important, perhaps, is that I'd love to work for another startup, even if it's one which did not spring from my own vision. 

But back to Jonathon and his firm. Fortify is an early stage investor perhaps best categorized as a Super Angel firm. That reads strangely as I write it since the words "managing partner", "firm" and "investor" usually sit alongside the words "venture capital" rather than the word "angel". And, truth be told, I view them as something of a hybrid.

But Jonathon was not like any of the angels nor VCs I met while seeking financing for the two ventures for which I was founder or co-founder. His manner is casual, fun, engaging, energetic, humorous, and irreverent - all while being pointedly frank about the realities of the startup environment, landing funding, and executing one's vision. He exudes the enthusiasm which usually emanates from the other side of "the table" - the side occupied by the startup's pitch man.

Jonathon started the session by asking everyone in the room to classify themselves along a spectrum from Founder to Fool - founders being those actively engaged in a startup venture of their own conception and fools being those employed by established companies. "Employed" was understood to mean holding no significant equity stake. Then he asked how many of the audience thought VCs to be [derrogatory expletive deleted]. Clearly he was delighted by the majority response and signalled his agreement that many - but by no means all - VCs do act like [same expletive]. During the question and answer session he provided more than one example of a VC he knows well and the overbearing and pompous way he acted in a given situation.

By contrast, Jonathon presented himself to the audience as an equal, there to share knowledge and experience both as an investor in startups and as a startup founder himself. He even referred the audience to a page on the web on which we would find the template for the term sheet Fortify uses. For most equity investors, that would be akin to a card shark showing other players how he plans to consistently beat them at poker.

Now, I've met others who had graduated from successful startups to become angels or VCs. Few of them maintain even a modicum of the friendly, enthusiastic spark that inspired entrepreneurs emit. On the other hand, I don't really know what Jonathan would be like were I to pitch him regarding a venture for which I wanted his money much less a situation in which I were explaining to him why the venture missed its user adoption targets for the third month in a row. But I think I'd be willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

I'm certain that all the entrepreneurs came away with a better sense of how to go about raising financing and a more comfortable feeling about the possibility of establishing a partnership with investors based on mutual respect and civility. I almost approached him after the meeting to pitch an idea I've been fleshing out for some time now. But it's too early; too many questions for which I have no answers just yet.

If you are looking for early stage financing, I think you have nothing to lose by contacting Fortify. You might not get funded but you'll certainly learn much from the experience.

Relatively high current penetration of mobile data services, a high growth rate in mobile data usage, and moderating prices for mobile data service plans in Brazil, coupled with nascent adoption of mobile advertising by even major global brands and their agencies all point to a great opportunity for companies providing software and services in the mobile advertising space.

It certainly is plausible that many in Brazil will adopt the use of a mobile device as their first and sole means of internet access just as so many people in developing countries have used mobile for voice communication without ever having had a land line.

As one who has led product development and marketing for Latin America and the Caribbean and a mobile internet junkie, I'm excited by the possibilities. Brazil is a fairly large market for all sorts of goods and services and tends to get a lot of attention due to its size. But what about other countries in Latin America? Is there reason to believe Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Venezuela, and Mexico, for example are on similar growth curves in the use of wireless devices for internet access? Share your thoughts or market data.

According to the company, 40% of all mobile searches coming to Google are local in nature at this point, which continues to trend upward.  As such, the search giant also announced that “physical location,” or the proximity of a local business to a user’s location will become a targeting variable when serving ads to mobile users.

Personally, I'm surprised at that figure. My own use of mobile search must be at least 75% local. I mean, the whole reason I'm using my smartphone is because I'm not at my desk in front of my PC - I'm out and about using various local services and quite frequently need to conduct a search to find the appropriate service to use. I do very limited casual web browsing on my phone even though my HTC Thunderbolt has a fairly large screen and 4G speed.

How much of your mobile search do you estimate is local in nature?

Recently, Ian Saunders' and David Sloly's slide deck on "How Unplanning Your Business Can Make it Happen Faster" caught my attention. Why? Because I have always taken pride in my skills at researching, strategizing, and detailing what it would take to make a new product or a new business successful at the top and bottom lines of a P&L and, with some difficulty, a balance sheet. Not just the financial modeling based on input from others but painstakingly thinking through and estimating significant cost items (most notably cost per lead), conversion rates, key capital investments, operating expenses...you get the picture.

These business planning skills are highly valued by many companies and a few even "work the plan" after "planning the work". Yet I am well aware that a number of successful internet-based businesses were not meticulously planned and that most details of the founders' original vision for the business and even the revenue models themselves changed several times and may change yet again. But is thorough planning more than just a waste of precious time? Does it reach the point of being a hindrance to success? I wanted to see what Saunders and Sloly had to say. Can planning actually kill a business idea as they state in their introduction?:

The problem with writing a fixed plan is that you can get stuck in amber mode. You get so bogged down with hypotheticals, financial modeling and revenue projections that your cool business idea gets stuck in a spreadsheet and the light never goes green. Instead of focusing on making your business idea happen, you end up suffering from analysis paralysis: the number one killer of all great business ideas.”

Reading the "manifesto" (as presentations on ChangeThis are called) brought to the surface something I had avoided considering consciously - that our startup team had spent too much time and energy creating a defensible business plan. I think anyone who has sat across the table from VCs intent not only on making smart investments but also demonstrating their mental superiority - why they have the money and you don't (and won't by the way) - knows what I mean by defensible. 

For truly new and novel businesses, the founders must make dozens or even scores of assumptions, often with no primary data and little to no secondary research to support them. If you haven't documented the rationale behind the guess-timates and, on top of that, you haven't properly integrated the resulting figures into both your financial model and your overall business case and performed credible best-case / worst-case analysis tweaking at least the key assumptions, how can you expect to survive a meeting with VCs? That was our thought process and the fear which drove us to obsess over the written plan and financial model. 

We received accolades for the professionalism of the business plan but never landed the big bucks. In fact, the plan was so good that it successfully raised nearly $20 million - in two rounds - for a portfolio company of several VCs to whom we had presented it. But that's another story.

What I know in hindsight is that a thorough and professional business plan probably provides no more than 15% of the impetus for an angel or VC investment. A host of other factors are more important - the fit with the investor's portfolio strategy and their own interests as individuals, the perceived quality of the startup team, the startup's geographic proximity to the investors, how big the opportunity is, competition, and more.

If all the factors align in the entrepreneur's favor, the investors will probably recommend an investment at least double what the founders contemplated as necessary - no matter how meticulously they thought through their capital needs. That's partly because the investors will assume that your assumptions are wrong; that you'll wind up adjusting your business model; and that, therefore, you will need more money than you think. And they're more often right than wrong on this score. In light of that, it seems a little silly to burn out the team making the plan perfect.

I don't mean to recommend shoddy planning. It's still important to get a ballpark sense of whether the business has legs - is the addressable market big enough and can you get enough users / customers / site visitors at an economic cost. This is at least as important for the founders as it will, later, be for prospective investors. I've seen too many startups fail to complete this basic analysis before spending lots of time and money on businesses that never stood a chance.

Going forward I'll adjust my advice to entrepreneurs to concentrate a little less on having a super business plan and, instead spend the time and energy saved to do everything they can to gain traction in the marketplace with a basic, no-frills version of their business - warts and all.

As I watch new developments in the mobile space, I commonly see that the most interesting new smartphone application developments out of Silicon Valley companies are based on iOS rather than on Android. Later, those that catch on, get ported over to Android. That doesn't seem to make sense - you would think mobile application developers would start out with the OS that has the largest installed base or perhaps the fastest growing installed base. Android ought to be the logical choice in both cases.

I can only explain this apparent lack of "market sense" on the fact that the Silicon Valley population tend to be early adopters. They adopted the iPhone in greater numbers, faster perhaps, than anywhere else on the planet. The iPhone became a central communications and information hub - part of the fabric of their daily lives - before the first Android phone hit the market. So when they envision an innovation for smartphones, they naturally think iPhone and iOS.

One key to successful innovation is to set aside one's own biases and to pay attention to sustained market trends, even if they don't reflect your own habits or preferences. And I'm sure that's not news to those opting for iOS-first development. I think they are ignoring the market trends because they are iPhone devotees who would like to reverse the market trend and to bring Apple back to dominance. And they think their new application will be part of making that happen.

No, I don't believe any one developer is under the illusion their new application will single-handedly turn the tables in Apple's favor. But I do get the impression that loyalty to Apple transcends rationale and gets a collective nod from the tech community when the choice is made to develop for iPhone first.

What do you think? Are there reasons I have not considered?

A big share of the ads delivered to mobile devices appear in mobile games. Although video ads tend to drive more engagement, such ads presented to mobile gamers take users out of the game app. Tapjoy believes that delivering rich media ads within the game will result in significantly greater views than the 30% current completion rate for pre-roll video ads which take place at screen change events within the course of the game.

Mobile ad platform Tapjoy is rolling out a new in-application video ad unit that allows users to interact with the ad without having to leave the app they're in. The aim is to provide a more seamless experience and higher engagement. In return for watching an entire video ad, a user playing a game will be able to earn virtual currency to unlock special features or content within the game. - MediaPost News

Who would have predicted that penetration of smartphones would have reached 40% by now? And with 80% of smartphone users doing at least some internet browsing and other data-intensive applications, US carriers must be delighted.

The folks over at Tatango compiled data from the Pew Research Centers Internet & American Life Project and created the infographic below which provides some insight into what US smartphone users are doing with their devices.