The Wipe Out
As entrepreneurs and creative professionals we may start a project, a product, a business that gets wiped out. Clients lost. Customers vanish. What happens next?
When I was in art school, I had a drawing instructor who had this one exercise that I never forgot. He would instruct you to draw a model for 90 minutes in soft charcoal. You would work slavishly, perfecting every curve and shadow. Then when time was up, he’d say “OK, take your chamois cloth and wipe it all out”.
Some students would gasp, others were incredulous. But I’ll lose all my work!
Once the drawings were erased he said, “OK, now you have three minutes to draw the entire thing again.”
Inevitably, the resulting drawings would be amazing. More full of life than the over-worked 90 minute versions. Why? Because we hadn’t really wiped out the drawing. The previous 90 minutes was visually engrained and in our muscle memory.
As entrepreneurs and creative professionals we may start a project, a product, a business that gets wiped out. Clients lost. Customers vanish. But what we have to remember is that the work we put in, the brain power we invested isn’t gone. It is in our muscle memory, ready to be released, full of life. Refined. Essential. The next one will be amazing.
photo: Shalom Jacobovitz
The Brand from the Black Lagoon
Brands can learn something by observing how Hollywood approaches classic films. What’s the difference between classic and dated? Is there an aspect of your brand that is due for a remake?
When the film The Shape of Water was released my first response was disbelief. One of my favorite films as a kid was The Creature from the Black Lagoon, a black and white classic that was terrifying and yet somehow comforting in memory. How could they remake it?
But when I saw the new version I was stunned by its beauty and poetry and thankfully it was a lot less scary. I guess I wasn’t alone. It just received the Oscar for Best Picture.
Last week I was contacted by a prospective client who wants me to revise their brand identity. In doing my research I checked out their website. The site was like looking at a faded postcard from 1991. Unresponsive, a clunky columned layout, low resolution photographs.
The client had no idea how dated it had become. They remembered it as classic and comfortable.
Is there an aspect of your brand that is due for a remake? Something you might revise to reach a level of beauty, poetry and performance that you hadn’t thought possible? And maybe at the same time make a little less scary?
photo: ©Universal Pictures
Going with the Flow
The copy on many business’s websites just crows about themselves. Our services. Our products. Our processes. That’s a problem.
One of my favorite books is “Undaunted Courage”, which is about the Lewis and Clark expedition to map and open the American West. When they came to the Missouri River they knew they had to use it to travel north. The only problem was that the river’s current flows south.
The thing that blows my mind about their journey isn’t the distance they travelled, the brutal winters they survived or the Native Americans they encountered. It’s that they physically dragged a 55 foot keelboat loaded with thousands of pounds of supplies up the Missouri against the current. For hundreds of miles. My back hurts just thinking about it.
Recently, I’ve been working with a client to create a customer journey map for their website. The copy on many business’s websites just crows about themselves. Our services. Our products. Our processes. When you talk to your customers that way you are trying to drag them upstream.
Instead, you need to focus on their mindset. Your customer is there to solve a problem they have. What they really want to hear is that you understand, that you care and that you can guide them to the solution. Effective website copy isn’t about you. It’s about them. Selling is easier when you go with the current.
That Sinking Feeling
A brand that isn’t built on a solid foundation is sacrificing the ability to grow brand equity over time. Don’t let it happen to you.
The Millennium Tower in San Francisco is sinking. Instead of using supports driven 200 feet down into bedrock, the 58 story structure was built on 950 “friction piles” in the sandy soil.
Now, 7 years after completion it’s sunk 15 inches and is leaning 2 inches to the northeast. The tower sits on a massive fault line in the earthquake-prone city, so having a stable foundation would probably be a good idea.
I thought of the Millennium Tower last week when talking with a client who has built a large online presence. They lamented that they had never invested in a full brand identity system when they launched and instead tacked on bits and pieces as they grew.
Now they find their brand aesthetic is inconsistent across a huge range of visual assets. The brand equity they have tried to build is sinking.
We’re going to fix it, but in the earthquake zone that is today’s marketplace, it pays to build your brand foundation on bedrock.
photo credit: SFGATE
Your Pedal to the Metal
There’s a saying, “If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you always got." If you're not satisfied with what you've always gotten, then something's got to change.
In 1958 Dick Flynn made a change. Dick was a race car driver and was looking for the perfect fuel. One day he discovered that by injecting nitrous oxide into his fuel mix he could produce a huge surge of power.
No one knew how he was suddenly winning so many races. But he did. He had found just the right catalyst to super-charge his engine. He kept the nitrous tank hidden under his dash, activating it just when he needed the boost.
There’s a saying, “If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you always got." If you're not satisfied with what you've always gotten, then something's got to change.
Brand consultants are accelerants. They can help you get places faster. Sure, you can continue in your lane, picking up an odd tactic or strategy here and there. You can slap a patch on your website or marketing materials and hope it gets you to the next mile marker.
But your dreams of success and freedom will be out of reach without a well-tuned brand. Let’s discover your perfect fuel.
photo credit: CC license @pxhere.com
This How You Pack a Punch
Major social media stars with millions of followers are increasingly perceived by their audiences as less “authentic”. This defeats the whole purpose of using influencer marketing. What’s the solution?
There’s a diminutive undersea powerhouse called a mantis shrimp. It does one thing really well. It packs a wicked punch. Mantis shrimp strike out with their little arms and hit their prey in three-thousandths of a second with 1,500 Newtons of force. So fast that the water actually boils and causes a tiny bubble-shock wave that kills their prey - even if they miss.
The power of being little, fast and packing a wallop reminds me of influencer marketing. Over the last few years brands discovered the value of being promoted by social media influencers. But the major stars with millions of followers are increasingly perceived by their audiences as less “authentic”. Defeating the whole reason for engaging them in the first place.
As a result, micro-influencer marketing has emerged. Brands that have historically engaged large-follower social media personalities are increasing going directly to much smaller influencers, and more of them. This way they can pay less, diversify and regain the valuable punch of authenticity in the endorsement.
Big or small, are you making the most of your brand's scale? Do you have a marketing tool you could reconfigure? There is no excuse for not packing a wallop.
photo credit: iStock.com
You're Making Too Much Noise
The amount of noise that we have to filter today is ridiculous. The signal that we want to hear, that holds a meaningful message, is getting harder to discern.
At Orfield Labs in Minneapolis there is something called an anechoic chamber. Also known as the world’s quietest room. The sound level inside it is -9 decibels. There is literally less than zero ambient noise. When you are in it, the only signal you hear is the sound your own ears make (yes, they actually produce a little noise). That, and your own heart beating.
The amount of noise that we have to filter today is ridiculous. The signal that we want to hear, that holds a meaningful message, is getting harder to discern. Unfortunately, sometimes we are responsible for creating this noise ourselves. Trying to be on too many social platforms at once, reflecting and bouncing too much content around. You can drown yourself out.
This is why I left Twitter last year (for the most part). My analytics revealed the promotions for my agency were mainly reaching the feeds of other marketers - who were all busy reverberating their own noise. Everyone was talking, but no one was really listening.
How quiet is the room you’ve chosen to be in? Is your customer there with you? They need to be able to hear the heartbeat of your message.
The Shark and the Chumsicle
When feeding off new trends you have to strategize where you want to play. Do you want to be the first to sink your teeth in? Do you know where are you are in the food chain?
Sharks are trendy. There is a shark feeding dive I do in the Bahamas where they use a 3ft. ball of frozen fish chum (yum!) suspended from a float in 40 feet of water. They rev the boat engines like a dinner bell. In a blink of an eye there are 60 sharks milling around.
The sharks start circling the “chumsicle” in a wide rotating arc. You get to join in and swim along side them. They don’t even notice. The sharks are busy strategizing.
Soon the most ambitious peel off and attack the bait. But they have a hard time because the chumcicle is still frozen. Later, it begins to thaw and the action gives new meaning to the word “frenzy”. At the end, when the ball is dwindling, the remaining sharks fill up on what’s fallen to the sandy bottom.
When feeding off new trends you have to strategize where you want to play. Do you want to be the first to try to sink your teeth in? Do you want to join when it’s a frenzy, the food is flying and the competition is the fiercest? Or do you exercise patience and benefit from the work of others? There is no one correct answer. You just have to commit to where you want to be in the food chain.
photo credit: where2wander.com
Your Wolf Pack
What can you learn from wolves that will help you succeed in your business? I'll tell you, and it's not what you think.
There is a behavioral phenomenon in wolves called the Beau Geste Effect. When a wolf begins to howl, his pack mates will begin to howl also. However, when they join the chorus, they don’t howl in the same tone. They pitch their howl up or down an octave - modulating the tone mid-howl. It makes the pack sound larger than it is.
During the Civil War, General Ulysses S. Grant wrote that judging from the nightly cacophony, "a pack of twenty wolves" had been shadowing his unit. When the pack was eventually spotted, it turned out there weren’t twenty. There were two.
When you make yourself appear larger than you are, two things happen: 1. You stake out your territory and lay claim to its resources…and 2. You give the competition second thoughts about messing with you.
Entrepreneurs and creative professionals are leveraging social media, blogs, articles, podcasts and video to multiply their voices and appear larger than they might be in reality.
Ruling your niche is a smart move. Being small is no excuse for not owning your neck of the woods. What more can you do to keep the competition at bay?
A Smell That Will Make You Money
Scientists have proven you are 100 times more likely to remember something that you smell than something that you see, hear or touch.Now brands are increasingly putting the power of scent to work.
Last week I was cooking a recipe that called for coconut oil. When I opened the jar I was immediately transported to being 16 years old on a beach in Michigan putting on suntan lotion. I almost got smell memory whiplash.
Smells are processed by the amygdala, the part of the brain responsible for memory functions and processing emotions. Scientists have proven you are 100 times more likely to remember something that you smell than something that you see, hear or touch.
Now brands are increasingly putting the power of scent to work.
In Orlando, a company recently projected "waffle cone" smell adjacent to an ice cream parlor, driving a 50% sales increase. REI used the smell of “campfire and pine” and guess who started selling more backpacks? Don’t even get me started about what Cinnabon does. You know what they do.
Do you have a service or product that you can enhance with a scent? If you do, you might be closer to smelling success.
A Close Shave
Blind loyalty to a brand can come back to bite you. I’ve known I’ve been getting ripped off for a while. But I just never did anything about it. Now I feel violated.
The viral video from Dollar Shave Club came out 5 years ago, so I’ve known I’ve been getting ripped off for a while. I just never did anything about it.
Gillette had me hypnotized into thinking that ever-increasing blade counts and handles with more foils than a Lamborghini translated to a shave only their product could achieve. Call me a slow learner, but I didn’t realize the extent of my stupor until Saturday.
That's when I walked into CVS to get cartridges for my aging Trac II razor. $32.99 for ten cartridges. No handle mind you, just bits of plastic with two blades at $3.29 each. I felt violated. My brand loyalty and my perception of quality got nicked by reality and I needed a styptic pencil.
A few days later, my new steel safety razor and 100 single-edge blades (at 5 cents each) arrived from Amazon. Wouldn’t you know it, with a little practice the shave I got from a 5 cent razor was just as close - and as a bonus, the luxurious feeling of the weighty steel handle was intensely satisfying.
Don’t get me wrong, I value quality, design, performance and technology. When you deliver them to me consistently I am the most devoted of brand evangelists. But when a brand begins to take advantage of that devotion, delivering the same results at a 6400% premium and are banking that I won’t notice (and I didn’t), let’s say I felt double razor burned.
How are you honestly earning your customers and clients devotion?
I'm Watching You
In business and design we often develop a products by thinking about our customer target and then creating something we think they will want. But often we land far off the mark and wonder what went wrong.
Over a period of 6 years, the photographer John Thackwray photographed the bedrooms of 1200 millennials from around the world. The range of physical environments, materials, colors and collections is absolutely fascinating.
In business and design we often develop a products by thinking about our customer target and then creating something we think they will want. But often we land far off the mark and wonder what went wrong.
What went wrong lies in the difference between thinking and observing.
Successful marketing relies on an intimate knowledge of your customer. You can’t learn what you want to know by asking them, because what they say they want and what they end up buying is often very different. Just ask someone who runs focus groups.
You have to observe them.
After looking at the bedroom photograph of just one of these millennials, I guarantee you could design a product experience that would delight them.
I am sure you have thought long and hard about your customer but have you really observed them?
This Is Why You Need A Drone
Companies trying to create brand strategies internally are hampered by the same thing: a lack of perspective. They’re just too close. Strategic accuracy requires an aerial view
During our town’s 4th of July fireworks I noticed something new. Little red lights up in the sky over the crowd. Aliens watching the festivities? Nope. Drones. Filming the fireworks from just outside the explosions.
High in the upper canopy of the Amazon, hovering above an active volcano, helping search and rescue teams, drones are giving us a new perspective. Perspectives we couldn’t get without their help.
Companies trying to create brand strategies internally are hampered by the same thing: a lack of perspective. They’re just too close. Strategic accuracy requires an aerial view to understand not only what the brand is about, but its competitive landscape and its customers.
Company insiders can create blindspots. CEO’s and CMO’s have strong ideas about what their company is or is not. Only an outsider has the independence to evaluate, recommend re-thinking, or even setting aside these preconceptions.
Branding agencies are like drones. They can give you that birds-eye perspective you simply cannot have no matter how high up you are in a company. Would your company benefit from seeing the fireworks from a different perspective?
photo: NANO CALVO/CORBIS
The Prince Needs A Logo
He sent me a detailed project brief. I sent him a proposal. He accepted it no questions asked. I thought this was a little odd, but I told myself everyone deserves an easy client once in a while. Don’t they?
Last month I got an email from a guy starting a furniture importing business. He needed a logo and pamphlet for his first trade show. Our phone connection was terrible, but he agreed without hesitation to my estimate of what it would cost.
He sent me a detailed project brief. I sent him a proposal. He accepted it no questions asked. I thought this was a little odd, but I told myself everyone deserves an easy client once in a while. Don’t they?
He wanted to pay the 50% deposit immediately by credit card. He was in a hurry. Too big of a hurry. I sent him the invoice. Then I got the email. It said: “I am going to pay you immediately, but I need a favor.”
That’s when I knew I was getting scammed. They want to pay you extra, then ask you to send the extra funds to another contractor for them. Then they dispute the credit card charge, and you’re out the money you relayed.
So I emailed a reply asking if by chance he was also a Nigerian prince. He never wrote back.
I keep telling myself I should have see it earlier. No clients are that easy. No clients ask no questions. But I mean, who scams design agencies? Who sets up a grift by asking for a logo and a pamphlet? A prince does apparently.
photo source: www.thetechbreak.com
All The Feels
Branding 101: When you speak to someone’s emotional center rather than their logical mind you solicit a response that is stronger, deeper, longer-lasting and primal.
Recently, I worked with a client who specializes in shipping stuff to and from Latin America. Experts in Third Party Logistics. Their competition’s websites are full of online calculators for weights, fees, dates, lists of countries. Lots of data. My client’s website is not. Their website talks about things like how it feels when your boss congratulates you for hitting that impossible shipping deadline.
In the book “Brand Immortality: How Brands Can Live Long and Prosper”, the authors analyzed 1400 case studies of advertising campaigns. They found that campaigns with purely emotional content almost doubled the performance of ads with only rational content. 31% vs. 16%. We act on what we feel. Not what we think.
When you speak to someone’s emotional center rather than their logical mind you solicit a response that is stronger, deeper, longer-lasting and primal.
That’s why I always counsel my clients on how critical it is to know their customers motivation. Not only what functional problem they want solved, but how they want to feel when that happens.
Because the feeling is what they are seeking. Security, joy, safety, recognition. If you can describe and deliver the feeling, the mind will follow.
photo credit: Alk3r@flickr.com
Video Is The New Black
It's estimated that 80% of all content consumed on the web will be video by 2020. To the entrepreneur, brand owner or creative professional, “video is the new black”. The once nice-to-have is now a requirement to remain competitive.
When I was 11, I filmed an epic disaster movie in my basement on a Super 8mm camera. It was called “Ball!”, and told the story of a Godzilla-sized Nerf basketball that destroyed an entire town, which consisted of my slot car race track, HO gauge train set and a lot of plastic army men. I used a lot of lighter fluid. Let’s just say it’s a good thing there weren’t smoke detectors in those days.
At the time, my friends and I were drawing lots of robots and war scenes on paper and sharing them with each other. Needless to say the screening of “Ball!” for my buds put me in a class of my own in the storytelling department. Because my story was moving.
It's estimated that 80% of all content consumed on the web will be video by 2020. Gulp. Facebook, YouTube, Snapchat, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, Instagram and their mother are now starting to stream original programming. Not happy with being merely platforms, they are jumping into being content creators.
Video is the new black. The nice-to-have is now a requirement to remain competitive. For the entrepreneur, brand owner or creative professional the important question is: Are you moving yet?
photo credit: Philip VanDusen
A Hamster Wheel In The Forest
If you take a proven concept and place it in a new context, you may find out things about your audience that you didn’t know. What actually motivates them. What they are really thinking. Why they are responding the way they do.
Scientists recently did an experiment. What would happen if you put a hamster wheel out in the forest? No food. No red button to press to get a treat. Just the wheel, an open door and a motion activated cam.
Mice, rats, shrews, voles, lots of little guys who were obviously not getting enough exercise showed up. They ran. They came back again and again. It turns out hamster wheels aren’t just for the incarcerated. When the scientists took it away, they all kept showing up wondering why the gym had closed.
If you take a proven concept and place it in a new context, you may find out things about your audience that you didn’t know. What actually motivates them. What they are really thinking. Why they are responding the way they do.
Contextual awareness is the next major hurdle in marketing. The goal is being aware of your customers changes in location, behavior, interests and needs at any given moment, as those moments change. Do you truly understand what makes your customers tick?
photo credit: Philip Roberts @flickr.com
Just Keep Swimming
The athletic marketplace is looking a lot like a reef these days. With the imminent demise of traditional sporting goods retailer Sports Authority, there is blood in the water.
I was scuba diving in St. Croix a couple of weeks ago. Lionfish are an invasive species in the Caribbean and they are eating all the other fish - absolutely decimating reef populations. They’re evil. So whenever you go diving these days you take a speargun. Because while you’re out having diving fun, you are also always hunting lionfish.
When you spear a lionfish, sharks, who can smell a single drop of blood in an olympic-sized pool pick up the electric impulses and soon show up hoping for a free meal. So you have to keep your eyes open. Because when sharks arrive after hearing a dinner bell, they are let’s just say, frisky.
The athletic marketplace is looking a lot like a reef these days. With the imminent demise of traditional sporting goods retailer Sports Authority, there is blood in the water. Athleisure brands like Under Armour, REI, Athleta and Sweaty Betty are circling, taking advantage of the opportunity and snapping up new customers as lifestyles and tastes change.
It’s survival of the fittest. Design and strategic branding are powerful assets for customer acquisition, but so is just paying attention when someone else is getting speared.
photo credit: lionfish: keywestaquarium.com
Under Your Skin
Branding is a lot like tattooing. It’s far better to think it through and make the investment than to cobble it together bit by bit.
My wife Beth has some tattoos, a few different styles, added at different times, and scattered about. One cluster she wasn't happy with anymore. She decided to join them together into a single design that was unified and had continuity.
In the tattoo world, they call this a “cover-up”. But obviously you can’t just start over with a clean slate. You have to incorporate the old designs into the new one in order to hide them.
It’s complicated, expensive and it takes far longer to do than the original. Meaning even more time under the needle. Ouch.
I’ve been working with a entrepreneur who realized the brand presence they have is a bit of a mess. They had developed it piecemeal, designing new elements as they were needed. But as it became larger, the brand became scattered.
As we worked to clarify his brand strategy and create an cohesive design system, it struck me that branding is a lot like tattooing. It’s far better to think it through and make the investment than to cobble it together bit by bit.
Because doing a brand cover-up hurts.
A Better Mousetrap
Peanut butter is the ticket with mice. The trick is to put the trap out without setting it and let them get used to eating from it. Then one day you set it. Brands do the same thing with us.
My next door neighbor has mice. It was a cold winter here in the Northeast and I guess their basement was a little more cozy than the woodpile outside. Their cat, historically a great mouser, has been slacking. It's not healthy to have mice around when you have kids, so they had to set some traps.
Peanut butter is the ticket with mice. The trick is to put the trap out without setting it and let them get used to eating from it. Then one day you set it.
Brands do the same thing with us. Nestle is doing it with their chocolate. We like Nestle's chocolate. We've gotten used to eating it.
So when Nestle announced that they’re going to cut the sugar in their chocolate, they set the trap.
We all know eating less sugar is a good idea. We’ve been packing away a little too much of it for the last few decades. So Nestle is betting that if we know there is less sugar in their chocolate, we will feel better about buying and eating more of it.
Some of us may be smarter, or have more willpower than that. But this mouse likes the cozy warmth of the idea of more chocolate. More chocolate is always better. Snap.