flat file 36×48

You have to be near Chicago, as this stuff is too heavy to ship.

Take for example our big flat file. 48″ x 36″, 10-drawer Mayline. Like new, top of the line. Would cost you $2400+ new. $1200 obo.

Or our treadmill desk. (You have to see it to appreciate it.) $850 firm. There’s more. Come see.

flat file 36×48

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We have better alternatives. One of them is serial brainstorming.

To the untrained eye, this looks like a roll of wrapping paper, but that’s where you’re dead wrong, buster. You’re looking at The Concept Dispenser™, the only one in captivity anywhere.

Once a properly-certified and licensed operator (i.e., anybody in the office) pulls off a few feet of potential concepts, they spread it out on the conference table. Everybody gets a strategy briefing, plus markers to whack away at a project in need of concepts. The paper begins to fill up with words, drawings, charts and questions.

Crucially, the sheet of paper is then taped to the war-room wall, and left up for days. After a day or two for ideas to percolate, individuals insert new phrases and dream-inspired doodles, answer questions left the day before, watch ideas unfold, migrate, compost and bloom.

Yes, the editor is still crucial (should we say indispensable?) and yes, there’s still plenty of chaff, but the time added for reflection and dialog stimulates creativity. Sometimes the original is refreshed by a newly-dispensed sheet with best-concepts-so-far, and posted again on the wall. (Preferably a wall you have to pass to go to the bathroom or coffee machine.)

It simply works better than traditional brainstorming. Some people, for example, make great contributions after a few days’ pondering. Archetypal right-brain people (for example, left-handed art directors who don’t spell well) often are fabulous adding drawings and designs – much better for them than verbalizing concepts for a moderator to write down.

Do we recommend you try this on your own? Heck, no. We have The Concept Dispenser™ under lock and key, pal. In the wrong hands, who knows what it might dispense.

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Awareness is only the ground floor.

Ground floor: “I know that brand” 

Up to “I like it” 

Up to “I need it” 

Up to “I have to own it” 

Up to ”I’ll buy”

Up to “I’m glad I bought it and you would be, too.”

A powerful brand will rise: Awareness, Preference, Desire, Urgency, Purchase, Evangelism. For those who focus on and obsess over awareness, be reminded you still have a long way to climb.

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The manatee, aka “sea cow,” is gentle and lovable. But … appropriate for branding a plus-size dress?

Recently, WGN radio asked us to discuss branding issues, starting with a Target stores’ mini-scandal. Imagine a plus-size dress labeled as “Manatee gray.” It’s worth a listen.

Our takeaway was not about Target’s unfortunate error, but their brilliant response. The interview also veered into other areas, including Acura’s inept model-naming, the Wii, and “the quicker picker-upper.”

Correcting a mistake is one of the best things you can do to build a brand story – don’t you agree?

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There’s an insightful/disruptive article in Forbes that turned on the lightswitch. The author, Steven Denning, takes on the demi-gods of B-school conventional wisdom and makes the case that MSV sloganeering has led to corrosive next-quarter-itis. Excessive cost-cutting tends to satisfy Wall Street, stress employees and piss off customers.

Turns out Peter Drucker was right again: “There is only one valid definition of a business purpose: to create a customer.”

A conventional CEO, driven by (and compensated for) meeting the Street’s expectations, is the one likely to allow horsemeat in the lasagna. It’s short-term smart, as she collects her bonus, even if the brand begins a slow death spiral.

On the other (stylishly gloved) hand, Zappo’s policies put beancounters into shock. Don’t know whether the shoes you’re ordering should be 8 or an 8-1/2? Order both and send one pair back, with free shipping. Discuss choices with the call center person for 20 minutes – he’s not on the clock. Inefficient and wasteful, right? Just step back and see how their customer loyalty keeps doubling and redoubling sales.

Management has two masters: shareholders and customers. Choose wisely.

Cost-cutting has its limits. You can surpress wages and cut benefits, which will benefit shareholders while making your workforce unstable and hostile. Or substitute cheaper ingredients (as in taking the cheese out of Cheez-Whiz) but will the pennies saved equal the erosion of customers? If you’re a dentist, you can send lab work to China, and increase your profits, but what if the lab 12 time zones away substitutes inferior metals that won’t last a decade?

In short, pleasing the Street might not grow your business and in fact “maximize shareholder value” might even fatally damage your brand. Pleasing customers and making them return again and again as brand evangelists is a proven strategy to grow your business exponentially – and shareholders get a bigger benefit.

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Understanding prospects is the most leveraged path to double sales. Prospects outnumber customers by 100 to 1 or 1000 to 1, or even more. Are you sure you know what they perceive now? How’s your visibility and reputation? How clearly are you differentiated? Is that differentiator emotionally urgent to identifiable prospects?

Restrain the impulse to put on rose-colored glasses. Projecting what you know about customers onto prospects is an easy trap to fall into, but it will never get you to double sales. Customers already like you and have chosen you at least once. Don’t assume prospects are customers-in-waiting, just needing another teaspoon of awareness to flock to your door. They may have different needs, and always have different attitudes.

Years ago, marketing was a sermon, a one-way, high-frequency sales pitch. Today it’s a conversation, and your brand’s future depends on putting those insights to their best use.

Research the gestalt of your brand, the total effect of all its expressions working together: not just the name, logo and tagline. Study the perception of your brand narrative. Your reputation, social media presence, web look and feel. How do prospect feel about original content, tone of voice? Approachability, likeability, urgency? Explore all the decision touch points (see our chart, above) to see where you can influence the dialog. It is not a sales funnel.

This is a task you should do, benchmark, and repeat at intervals on the path to double sales. It’s also something you should consider outsourcing, for professionalism and objectivity. We know guys who are really good at this.

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Some grammar rules are stupid. They are the artificial creation of purists who admired Latin grammar and tried to shoehorn English into a strict imitation of that structure.

English continues to evolve, and the language (as actually used) thumbs its metaphorical nose at the dumbest of those conjunction function injunctions. We end sentences with prepositions, split infinitives, and abandon the “proper” use of whom.

To deliberately break those rules is something we ain’t putting up with. So to speak.

We tell our staff writers, by the way, to avoid making grammar “mistakes,” even the ones we just called stupid. W, as they say, TF?

You should in your writing, we believe, steer clear of grammar errors, whether perceived or real, sensible or ridiculous, because they cause a percentage of your audience to stop thinking about what you’re saying, distracted by how you’re saying it.

What percentage will be distracted? A split infinitive might annoy 1%. Confusing “less” with “fewer” maybe 10%. The “shoot me now” errors might bring sneers from 30%. Why, we have to ask, should you roll the dice when you don’t need to? Why risk losing the focus of that reader, when she might be the one who would otherwise buy from you, hire you, vote for you?

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With a creative resource, not so much. You are, after all, looking for the breakthrough, the category changer, the wow factor, an end product that delights, surprises and opens the wallets of buyers. Aren’t you?

And yet… category experience is often demand number one.

That’s understandable – it’s an easy disqualifier to sift through candidates: ”We want someone who speaks our language.” “How many widget-maker clients have you had?” It’s also reassurance for the insecure: “Don’t blame me. I chose the guys who did it 512 times before.”

Yes, it’s a comfort to find someone already in the bubble. But it’s often the road to Ordinary.

To illuminate, a personal story: years ago I had a subgroup within the creative team who handled our one-and-only ag client, a company I won’t name, but their initials are Monsanto. The subgroup consisted of an art director and a copywriter who had tons of ag experience. Then, with a deadline approaching for a new product intro, the art director had a heart attack, and the writer had a nervous breakdown. In a matter of days, I had one guy in a hospital, one guy in a rubber room, and a big problem on my hands. I recruited a brave art director, and flew to St. Louis to meet with the client. We asked for and got a one-day immersion in the product and the market, starting from our city-boy ignorance of “post-emergent herbicide” and “no-till” and when the heck do farmers make purchasing decisions?

Back home, but still basically ignorant, we pulled together a campaign that made sense to us, told the brand story, and made us smile. We held our breath. Net result? It was record-breaking in its impact, and won all kinds of industry awards. The success, I am convinced, came from our not knowing the traditional way things are done.

In short, growing your brand exponentially-not-incrementally might require a bomb-throwing disruptor more than a careful, surgical clinician with category experience. Celebrate the un-expected.

Yesterday, we got an RFP from a suburb looking for a municipal re-branding which asked for recommendations from three other municipalities for whom we had “done similar work.” Sigh. We knew two things for sure: they’re likely to get an Ordinary campaign – and we wouldn’t respond.

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Marketing fundamental #1 is know your target. (Duh.) After that, aggressively exclude segments who waste your resources chasing them. It’s a survival skill.

What got us thinking about this was someone who had seen our Darwinian video, asking if we were “concerned” with losing prospects who deny natural selection. It’s a reasonable question, since polling indicates about half of America rejects Darwinian evolution, some of them fervently.

Half. That’s a troublesome big number to offend, bewilder or ignore. We do so, however, judging them to be among the never-gonnas. Contemporary digital marketing, for example, calls for a blend of art and science. The un-scientific half of the population seems stuck in the last century, maybe even the 19th, so we see no overlap: potential branding clients vs. flat-earthers. The Venn diagram circles don’t touch.

Many marketers want to reach out to everyone as a just-in-case strategy, to leave no stone unturned. It’s a classic example of bad budgeting. Fish where the fish are. Once you’ve identified the bullseye of the target, focus on it, look at most one circle out, and  stop talking altogether to the outer rings where you’ll spread yourself thin.

Are there market segments you should ignore? Concerned with media choices with too much waste circulation? Need suggestions on how to target more cost-effectively? Call us.

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