Sunken Treasure

Remus 6000 spends most of it’s time deep below the surface. An underwater robot, Remus’ long-range sonar scans the bottom and then goes back to take pictures of anything it finds unusual. 

In May, Remus took pictures of what the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution is calling the “holy grail of shipwrecks” 2000 feet down in the Caribbean. The San Jose, a 310-year-old Spanish galleon carrying gold, silver and emeralds worth as much as $17 billion.

You can’t see the bullion, cannons and artifacts scattered across the ocean floor from the surface you have to go deeper. And you need Remus 6000 to get there.

When speaking of brand value, many talk about how recognizable the logo is, how innovative the product is, the imagery used in marketing. But that stuff is what we see on the surface. The things today’s customers take for granted. You have to go deeper. And you need an agency partner to get there.

Below the surface is the realm of customer journeys and experience. Below the surface is where relationships are forged, where customer satisfaction is created and true brand evangelists are born. 

Below the surface is where the brand value treasure lies.

THREE LITTLE WORDS (AND PEOPLE ARE FREAKING OUT)

Companies regularly write lengthy vision statements, mission statements and mottos. Sadly, far too many turn out to be empty emotional BS.

Before Google got humongous they wrote a cheeky, three word, silicon-valley-punk credo for themselves: “Don’t Be Evil”. Having written a lot of long client credos, I loved it because it was only three words. And I loved Google as a business for putting a moral stake in the ground. 

Recently Google has been considering working on lucrative contracts for the Defense Department. Something about using AI and video image recognition for drone accuracy from what I’ve read. It seems lots of folks who work at Google are freaking out. They think that helping drones kill people better falls into the “evil” category just a tad. I’d have to agree.

Establishing a credo can be one of the most powerful things a brand can create. It guides every brand decision and action. It keeps you and your employees grounded in the brand values. Sometimes those values are tested.

Ultimately, Google withstood their test by refusing the Defense projects, demonstrating to the world their credo is meaningful and authentic.

Even if it is only three words.

Different Is Better Than Better

If you’ve ever stayed in central London you know that the hotels are fantastic. The best.

There are hotels that have old world charm that come in a range of prices. There are contemporary design hotels like St. Martins Lane but these are always very pricey. What didn’t exist was a high-tech high-design option available at a lower price point.

The savvy folks at hub by Premier Inn noticed this empty quadrant in the X/Y map of the competitive landscape. So they did what any smart brand does, they filled it.

I stayed at hub by Premier Inn when I was at a conference recently. My room was about 9 x 14 feet - about the size of a generous jail cell. There was no window, just a backlit glass panel that made you feel like there was one. The headboard was a touchscreen that controlled everything from the “do not disturb” sign outside to the A/C. The interior design was so inspiring and clever I never felt deprived. In fact, I felt smart, stylish and just a little bit richer. 

By expertly delivering on an unmet need, hub by Premier Inn has expanded to 40 locations in under 5 years. Hub is killing it.

Take a fresh look at your competitive landscape. Does everyone look the same? Are they offering the same things, in the same way? Where is the white space that you can fill?

In the Flow: 10 Ways to Stay Creative

Creativity is critical to your success as a creative professional or an entrepreneur. New ideas and innovative solutions are your livelihood. But even naturally talented creative thinkers need to cultivate and develop their ability to consistently create “ah-ha moments”. Great ideas don't just drop out of the sky. You have to create an environment for those ideas to grow and be nurtured.

Creating an environment for creativity means looking at your inner world, such as your thoughts and beliefs, your outer world or physical environment, and taking inspired action. Here are my top 10 tips on breaking through for higher creative output:

#1 It’s OK to feel blocked

The very first thing to do when you hit a creative block is this: quit beating yourself up. Negative self-talk will only perpetuate your misery. Here’s the truth about creativity; Everyone hits a dry spot. Creativity isn't a constant. It ebbs and flows. So relax, and give yourself a break, because if you try too hard you’ll tense up and the flow can become constricted.

#2 Carry a notebook everywhere

Everything is available in digital format, even your notes and sketches But there is a downside to going digital with your inspiration; digital can get lost. If you carry a notebook and actually physically write it down or sketch it out, you’re always going to have it at the ready. It’s easier to page through a notebook than it is to open a folder of individual documents. The tactile aspect of doing so is inspiring in itself.  So sketch, doodle, write, tear stuff out of magazines and paste it in. Carry a notebook with you everywhere you go so your ideas are easily written and retrieved.

#3 Walk

It's scientifically proven that going for a 10-minute walk will dramatically increase your productivity and your positivity. New ideas will pop into your mind when you are walking - no podcasts, no music - just walking. Jump on a treadmill or take laps inside if that’s the only option available to you. Getting some fresh air by walking outside boosts your oxygen intake which gives the brain more fuel. Additionally, nature acts like a reboot for the overloaded brain so walking outside gives you twice the benefit.

#4 Copy Something

All fine artists learn by copying. Designers, musicians, writers, and even business professionals actually learn by copying, as well. There's very little in the world that's really original. So if you're having trouble with creative ideas, just copy something. It'll get the creative flow moving and some new ideas will inevitably pop up for you to explore. 

#5 Change your environment

I noticed that after spending many hours in my home office and then going into New York City, I'd have an explosion of ideas. I would write down so many blog ideas, lists, and things I wanted to do. I saw the connection clearly: I realized that simply getting out of my office and getting on the train made my creativity skyrocket. It was the change in my environment. A break from the monotonous routine that got my synapses firing. If you want to stay creative, you must change your environment. Go to the library. Get on a train. Take a drive. Take a walk. Simply sitting in another part of the room can even do the trick. Break  “location monotony” and get creative.

#6 Do something new

Using your brain in a different way can shake off the cobwebs. If you do a lot of designing, do some writing. If you do a lot of writing, do some sketching. If you live in Excel spreadsheets, take up piano. There's a famous saying, “If you want to change what you get, you've got to change what you do.” In order to loosen up those creative ideas, do something new and different.

#7 Practice

Creating a “final product” means sometimes  spending hours crafting it to make sure it's absolutely perfect. Instead, create some stuff that you're definitely going to throw away. Start a  project knowing you're not going to keep it. When you intentionally create work that’s impermanent, it takes away some of the stress that’s impeding your creative flow. It also gives you an opportunity to practice your craft without the tension of creating something final. This gets the ideas moving and helps release the stress that perfection brings.

#8 Calm your mind

In today's fast-paced digital world, we're always on our phones or laptops. Or we have TV, music, YouTube or a podcast constantly providing a healthy dose of sensory overload. All this input doesn't leave space for ideas and creative thoughts to gestate. In order to center your creative self, take some time out of your day and turn off all the input. Turn off your phone, put your computer to sleep, and just sit with yourself. You'd be really surprised how creative ideas will flow in when you simply stop and meditate. Not a seasoned meditator? Here are some short, painless meditations to try.

#9 A Special Kind of Brainstorming

Brainstorming has fallen out of favor in the past few years since its efficacy was debunked (Harvard Business Review, 2015). What has taken its place is a specific type of brainstorming, called a “question burst.” A “question burst” is “a process for recasting problems in valuable new ways” (Harvard Business Review, 2018) by writing down every new question you can ask about this problem. Writing questions instead of searching for answers helps you push past creative blocks by going deep into the “what ifs.” There’s less logic and bias to hold you back when you ask questions, so the creativity surges. Give it a try by yourself or in a group. You’ll be surprised how quickly interesting ideas start to formulate.

#10 Feed your mind

There is so much amazing visual inspiration available for you in print (which still exists, by the way) and on the web. Constantly feed your mind with beautiful images before a creative dry spot pops up. Make a habit of gathering inspiring images. Collect them like a fiend. There are a host of applications that make it easy to collect images. Everyone knows Pinterest, and there are other options like Niice or Behance, which help you make beautiful mood boards. You can also use software you may already have like Keynote, PowerPoint, or a Google Slides  document, Evernote or Google Keep. Become a voracious collector of visual inspiration and feed your brain a diet of refreshing stimulation. It will definitely improve your creativity.

Being in a creative “slow moment” or an “idea desert” is not fun. I know, I’ve been there. It happens to the best and brightest. No one is immune. But these tips and tricks are certain to  help coax your creative self back to life and have you producing exceptional work again in no time

5 Reasons Why You Should Be Developing Content Now

For any personal brand, entrepreneur, or business the most important thing is the power of attraction. How are you going to get clients, customers, and a tribe to come to you? How are you going to attract them to your goods, services and all you have to offer?

Once you get them, how are you going to retain them? How do you become their favorite? How do you build a level of credibility that creates a steadfast belief in you? Executing flawlessly on your offering, both in product quality and service excellence is one way. But today that isn’t enough. Today that is the baseline. How you rise above the competition is by establishing content development as a core competency. So, what are some of the benefits?

#1 It Contributes To Professional Independence

Statistics show 40.4% of the U.S. workforce is now made up of “contingent workers” -that is, people who are what we traditionally consider freelancers or independent contractors. The Bureau of Labor Statistics last reported in 2005 that number was 11.6%. Think about that trend for a minute. Sobering, huh? Some estimate that by 2020 up to 50% of the American workforce could be untethered from full-time employment. This means there's a lot of people out there who are going to have to start developing independent marketing messages to attract their own customers and clients. They won't have a traditional job or a company that they work for to do that for them. Therefore, developing a level of independence is in reality developing a level of income security. Developing content is a key personal brand building activity that can help establish that independence.

#2 It Establishes Credibility

By developing content; articles, blog posts, videos, infographics, presentations, courses, newsletters, curated material, it helps establish you as a thought leader in the marketplace. Content development gives you the opportunity to demonstrate that you truly know your stuff. That you are an expert. If you offer up real value, your audience will recognize, remember, and come to revere you. Additionally, when you offer content for free it draws your audience to you even quicker. Of course, paid advertising can also draw a crowd but that activity is pure promotion. Developing content exercises the law of attraction in a way that can't be bought.

#3 It Exercises Your Creativity Muscle

Developing content is going to help you develop a special kind of muscle. A creativity muscle. Any artist, singer, painter, musician knows that by practicing their craft, they develop a creative muscle that keeps a level of “flow” happening. And if they stop practicing their art for any period of time, they get rusty and it takes them a while to get back into that flow and creative output. By making a commitment to develop content on a regular basis you're exercising your creativity muscle. You become an idea generation heavyweight. Execution is easy, but killer ideas are the fuel of innovation and growth.

#4 It Increases Confidence

Developing content is an excellent way to feel great about yourself. You're going to rapidly realize just how much it is that you know. It helps to create a personal, internal resonance of the value you can offer the world. Simultaneously, you are demonstrating your knowledge to others while in the process providing real value to them. Simply put, helping folks just makes you feel good. Like anything truly worthwhile, developing content is somewhat awkward and scary in the beginning. But over time you get better at it and it feels like a much easier and more natural thing to do.

#5 It Grows Your Business

Content development used as in-bound marketing is great for business. I’m living proof. In two years my YouTube channel and brand•muse newsletter now generate over 75% of my agency’s new business leads. By developing content that's valuable to people they become willing evangelists for your brand. And because people trust other people’s recommendations more than advertising messages or a brand promoting itself, it means your tribe becomes your marketing department. Every new piece of content you produce seeds priceless word-of-mouth marketing.

Sure, the content landscape has gotten pretty noisy and the competition for eyeballs and ears is fierce. But the benefits of developing content are as much internal as they are external. So, if you haven’t yet begun to do it, now is the time to begin. No more excuses. At the beginning you will suck at it. Everybody does. But over time the creative muscle strengthens and the gears of the idea machine start to hum. You’ll get better. But to reap these benefits, you just have to start.

Photo credit: Getty Images

Philip VanDusen is a creative thought leader and principal of Verhaal Brand Design an agency that specializes in leveraging brand strategy and design to build brand affinity and equity for companies and entrepreneurs. Get more from Philip in his newsletter brand•muse, His YouTube channel or connect with Verhaal Brand Design on Facebook.

The 7 Commandments of Brand Design

"Your brand is the single most important investment that you'll make in your business."
- Steve Forbes

When I talk about branding, I often talk about the 3 R’s: recognized, remembered and revered. The success of any brand can be measured by how well it has achieved those three simple words. But how do you get there? The design of a brand has to hit on a lot of cylinders to get to those 3 R’s. Here are seven of the key attributes of a brand’s design that are critical to success.

1st COMMANDMENT:  Make It Beautiful

Beautiful design is proven to be a quantifiable competitive advantage. Having an elegant, contemporary design is what today’s consumers expect. Great brand design is easy to look at. You need to look successful to be successful. A homely, amateurish brand design is going to make people click away from you, and you're not going to build your business that way. No one is going to volunteer to be an evangelist for an ugly brand.

2nd COMMANDMENT:  Make It Simple

The world is way too noisy and too complicated. We're inundated with a tremendous amount of visual stimulation and information every moment. Everyone's looking for simplicity in their lives. If you make it simple, you make it a less complicated and less stressful experience to interact with your brand. You also make it easier to be remembered (there’s an R again) and easier for customers to communicate what you do to others.

3rd COMMANDMENT:  Make it Strategic

Hoping it looks good is not a strategy. Your brand design has to be created with intentional focus on what your target customer avatar wants and is expecting from you. You have to display an aspirational aesthetic and speak their visual and verbal language. Great brand design is about reduction. Getting rid of all that is unnecessary and boiling down to the essence. Brand design strategy is as much what not to show as it is what to show. All design execution needs to stem directly from the brand strategy.

4th COMMANDMENT:  Communicate

All strategic brand design is communication. You need to communicate who you are, what you do, how you do it, how you do it differently and why people should care. Powerful brand design communicates through three things: semiotics, the meaning of symbols and images, through color theory and color psychology, and through verbal or written communication. By artistically weaving those three together, you tell a brand story.

5th COMMANDMENT:  Be Different

From the time we're adolescents, we all seek to fit in. Humans naturally gravitate towards the median,  to “normal”. It takes a lot of work, concentration and real courage to be different. Just like the brand’s unique selling proposition, having a brand design that visually differentiates you from your competitive environment can make breaking through the noise a hell of a lot easier. Just ask Method the home cleaning products brand. By adopting a product line in clear bottles with whimsical shapes and a rainbow of liquid colors they smashed through the sea of blue and orange dominating the laundry aisle owned by Tide and Gain. Not an easy thing to do. But they did it through design.

6th COMMANDMENT:  Be Consistent

In order to be recognized, you have to be remembered, and in order to be remembered, you have to be consistent. Everywhere your brand shows up, at every brand touch-point; online, retail, social, outdoor, packaging, media, your imagery, your color, all of your brand design elements have to be absolutely consistent. Every inconsistent touch-point erodes customer recognition. Inconsistency bleeds brand equity.

7th COMMANDMENT:  Be Memorable

If you're simple, if you're different, if you're consistent and if you communicate, you'll be memorable. And being memorable is the gold standard of brand design. If you're memorable, people will return to you, and they'll recognize you wherever they come across you. You'll create brand evangelists who will ultimately do the work of building your brand for you. And it doesn’t get better than that. Amen.

photo: Charlton Heston in Cecile B. DeMille film "The Ten Commandments"

The Wipe Out

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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