Blog – Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing

Page One On Google Is Your New Business Card

Fri, 22 Jul 2022 23:02:00 GMT

Do a search for your name, your company name, your product or service names. Whatever you find on page one in the Google SERPs amounts to a significant collage of how your brand is seen in the wild today.

See, it doesn’t matter if your best client tells their best friend you are the most awesome thing since people started using the word awesome – Google you they will and what they find is all part of the buying process.

Controlling what people find when they search is a branch of marketing that is commonly referred to today as reputation management.

Some folks limit the field to reviews, but it’s much larger than that.

Consider this encyclopedia description: Reputation management is the practice of attempting to shape public perception of a person or organization by influencing online information about that entity.

Reputation management used to fall almost exclusively under the heading of PR. If the local newspaper decided to run an expose on your lousy customer service, then your PR firm would do what they could to make it go away. And frankly, it often did blow over.

Today, however, everyone is the local newspaper and what they publish lives on a permanent record of how you’ve wronged them – accurate or not.

And unfortunately, Hell have no fury like a customer scorned. Google your favorite brand and add the word “sucks” in your search. So Apple + sucks. What you’ll find no matter the brand is at least a handful of sites dedicated to letting you know what this means.

It’s simply a reality in the digital world. But, it’s not just that people have the ability to rate, review and otherwise expose companies that don’t live up to their promises, finding and using these reviews has become a part of the buying behavior.

A recent BrightLocal survey found that 88% of consumers say that they trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. That’s right the review from a total stranger carries as much sway as a personal recommendation.

Page one on Google: new rules apply

In a world where everyone is a publisher, brands must adhere to a handful of rules when it comes to customer interaction. (By the way, these have always applied, we just can’t get away with not following them anymore.)

Keep your promises

Okay, this has always been a very good idea, but today, if you don’t, it’s over. If you ship late, don’t honor your guarantee, or simply don’t respond to customer requests, you can bet it will make headlines somewhere.

Be transparent

I know this term is very overused, but when people can and do publish what they experience, it makes the need to be open and honest about what happened, what’s next, and what you’ve learned part of the deal.

Respond publicly

Turn to Twitter, and you’ll see plenty of organizations using the tool as a customer service platform. You may save one customer with a direct and brilliant reply, but you will likely positively impact many others paying attention as well. (Actually, the best way to get help with your Google My Business profile is via GoogleMyBusiness on Twitter. ( GoogleMyBusiness on Twitter .)

Here LLBean hosts reviews on their site and responds to negative reviews in a way that limits the negative impact.

Address criticism

Some people are just never happy, but some people make a useful and valid point when they level criticism on a brand. Pay attention to what people are saying, invite feedback at every turn, and join the conversation.

Learn from your mistakes

One of the often overlooked positives in making mistakes or hearing critical reviews is that they are an opportunity to get better. Pick up a copy of J ay Baer’s Hug Your Haters for some serious tips on playing by these new rules to win.

The best defense

Cliché as it may be to state – when it comes to reputation and review management, the best defense is a good offense.

Inevitably most businesses let a customer or two down and must suffer the blows of a negative review. Or worse – the unwarranted attacks of a former employee or competitor’s scheme.

If you wait to take action after the fact, your job will be much tougher. If, however, you proactively claim real estate, nurture relationships and recruit positive coverage, you’ll be well shielded from the negative if it should arise.

A word about negative reviews

Negative reviews hurt, they feel kind of personal. I get 90% glowing reviews on my books, but the 1 or 2 negative reviews always seem to get under my skin. It’s human nature.

When and if you get some negative coverage, particularly in the form of a scathing review from a past customer, relax and go to work on limiting the damage.

First and foremost make an honest assessment. Is there anything you could have done better, is this a one-time freak case, do you have a side of the story to share.

But, most of all, don’t throw gas on the fire with an aggressive response.

Here are some things to consider about purely negative reviews and what you can do about them. Both Google and Yelp give you the ability to flag any review and ask that it be deleted if it meets any of the following.

Opinion vs. facts

In the US the 1st Amendment gives people the right to free speech. Anyone can express their opinion about something. What they cannot do is state facts that are not true. So, if they say the food was terrible, that’s fair game. But if they say they doubt you even have a health inspection clearance, well that they cannot do!

False information

If someone claims that you were not open when you said or that you did not offer what you advertised and this is, in fact false, you can ask to have it removed.

Conflict of interest

If the spouse or employee of a competitor posts a review to hurt your business you have the right to demonstrate that there is a clear conflict involved and the review may be considered for removal.

Hate, sexually explicit

Obviously, inappropriate is inappropriate positive or negative, and the review sites want this removed as much as anyone.

Address negative reviews head on, but don’t let them ruin your reputation. Sometimes things happen and responding to a negative review can be your chance to demonstrate what your brand is really about.

Your plan of action

The following five steps should be part of your reputation plan of action. Set some goals around reviews and results and go to work on each element consistently.

Set up alerts

Use a tool like BuzzSumo (BuzzSumo is paid vs. free Google Alerts, but I think BuzzSumo is far more effective.) to set up a series of alerts.

I create alerts for my name, my company name and the titles of my books and receive a daily any time those terms are mentioned online. In addition to capturing in the moment mentions to manage, you’ll also find some very positive opportunities to engage other bloggers and businesses.

BuzzSumo lets you monitor all mentions of your brand with daily alerts

Monitor channels

Once you’ve set up comments on your blog, a Facebook page, and Twitter profile, make sure you actively monitor each for opportunities to engage and respond. Sometimes simply acknowledging a bad review or comment can help put out the fire, but timeliness is key.

Don’t forget to check out some of the sites set up just for negative feedback like RipOffReport and Complaints Board .

Claim real estate

As stated above, go on the offense. Claim and monitor all of the profiles you can. While you may think that LinkedIn isn’t a great tool for your business, there’s a very high probability that your LinkedIn profile will rank on page one of Google for your name. Why not create as many pages as possible where you control the content?

Guess what – guest posting on other blogs and publications is a great SEO and awareness play, but it’s also an essential reputation management play . When you Google my name dozens of articles I’ve written for other sites appear in the first few pages essentially locking up lots of prime real estate.

Host feedback

If you sell products and services, you should consider giving people the ability to offer feedback on your site. This way you can see what’s being said, monitor for accuracy and respond directly. Of course, you must be transparent here as it will be pretty obvious if you simply delete negative reviews.

There’s also nothing wrong with having some fun with this too.

This sandwich shop got a lot of positive buzz by poking a little fun at the sometimes over the top negative comments businesses receive.

Get proactive

Even if you have lots of raving fans, you probably know how hard it is to get reviews in the places you need them – Google, Yelp, and industry specific review sites.

People love to express their opinion and maybe you even get lots of compliments and unsolicited emails from raving fans. So, let’s get those reviews online with a proactive review funnel.

Review funnel explained

A review funnel is simply a tool to make it much easier for your happy customers to place reviews of your business on the important review websites. But, if done effectively, it’s also a tool to help head off potential negative reviews before they happen.

Here are the elements of a review funnel

With a review funnel in place, your team can confidently invite any customer to leave a review, knowing you’ve made it as easy as possible for them to do so.

The post Page One on Google Is Your New Business Card appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

Google My Business: The Key to Ranking Your Local Business

Fri, 15 Jul 2022 18:00:00 GMT

For local businesses, ranking your business in Google My Business (the Google maps 3-pack) can be the difference between thriving and merely surviving.

All Google products evolve as they find ways to make search better and, let’s face it, make more money from that fact.

There are a handful of factors that Google uses to decide what sites to show when a person searches for a local business.

While we have previously shared our thoughts on reviews , schema markup , and citations , today I want to talk about the linchpin of the local listing game – your Google GMB Page .

There’s a lot of recent chatter about the Google My Business page, linked to Google+, going away, but for now it’s still vital data that feeds to Google Maps and even in some of the exploratory versions people see in the wild, things like reviews on your Google My Business page are going to continue to be a ranking factor.

The presence of the Google Maps data in mobile searches makes this element increasingly important for most local businesses. I have a client in the home services industry that receives 66% of their current traffic on mobile devices and tablets.

ComScore recently found that 78 percent of local-mobile searches resulted in an immediate offline purchase.

You really can’t even dream about showing up for local searches unless you claim and Optimize Your Google My Business page first.

A little Google My Business housekeeping

There’s a good chance you have a Google My Business page, even if you don’t remember setting it up.

Okay, sorry for all that housekeeping, it’s just we’ve seen how tangled this one can get and fixing it is a big deal.

Now let’s get your Google My Business Page optimized

So, let’s assume you’ve found your Google My Business page all systems are go.

There are few things you should consider:

Google offers some pretty good tips for setting your Google GMB up the way they suggest.

Some more advanced options

There are other ways to optimize this important element, but make certain you have the ones above covered.

Although most of what it takes to rank locally isn’t that complex, sometimes it makes sense to get a pro involved. After all, optimizing directory profiles might not be the best use of your time.

We created the Local Foundation Package as a complete and ongoing “done for you” marketing service so you can rest assured all of these more technical local ranking factors are taken care in just the right manner.

Either way, if you keep chugging along with these tips pretty soon when someone says “Google that” they’ll find your business.

The post Google My Business: The Key to Ranking Your Local Business appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

The Local SEO Playbook – Your Guide to Local Rankings

Fri, 08 Jul 2022 15:13:00 GMT

Look, if you’re a local business, meaning most or all of your business comes from customers living in your community, you must get very serious about local SEO.

Don’t worry, ranking locally for the kinds of things your prospects are looking for isn’t rocket science, but it does take a serious commitment to a handful of things.

In case you’re wondering if it’s worth the investment in such a commitment, let me share a few survey tidbits.

And, I could go on, but I’m guessing you see the point – if you don’t rank well locally for the things people are searching for marketing will be a lot harder and a lot more expensive.

Here’s the good news – focus on these five elements and you can expect great results from local SEO and search. (The competitiveness of your industry may dictate your ultimate results.)

Optimize Google My Business

Google has a bit of a naming crisis when it comes to their local directory listings, but for now, you must pay attention to, claim, and optimize your Google My Business Listing.

If this is news to you go immediately to Google’s Free Business Listing page and find out if you can claim your current listing.

Many people created or had created Google+ listings and Google made a mess of how this became Google My Business so you may have some cleanup to do to make sure that you only have one listing for your business and it’s the one Google thinks is your business.

Once you claim the right listing you need to make sure you take full advantage of all of the real estate and linking options available to you.

This, by the way, is essential if your business is to ever show up in the coveted Google 3-pack for local searches shown above.

Make sure you have the right business category and subcategories chosen for your business.

Make note of the exact way your business name, address and phone number (NAP) appear. Exact meaning is Street or St., is it Heating & Cooling or Heating and Cooling. Whatever you show listed as the NAP on your Google My Business Page, you’ll want to use consistently on your own website and across all directories. (More on this in a bit.)

Get markup right

Search engines are busy trying to adopt a consistent markup protocol to help use HTML code to properly identify things like businesses, reviews, addresses, books, movies and the like.

You can learn about the current popular markup for local businesses by visiting Schema.org .

Using proper markup for your address is kind of like handing Google your business card on a silver platter. It doesn’t look like anything to the naked eye, but Google spiders can be 100% certain what they are looking at when it comes to identifying an address on your web pages.

The good news is that you don’t really need to know anything about the underlying code to get this part right. Simply visit Schema.org’s Local Business NAP generator and fill in the blanks – The tool will produce the HTML code you need to add to your site in place of your current address.

There are other things you can do with structured markup and you can read all about it here .

Clean up citations

So, you might very well be familiar with a few directories like Yelp! and Google Local, or maybe even an industry-specific directory or two like Houze or Angie’s List, but you probably didn’t realize that Google relies on hundreds of data aggregators and directories to help them sort out and keep straight all of the local businesses out.

So, getting your listing straight on Google is essential, but if you’ve moved, or changed your phone, or just listed your details in all sorts of ways in business filings or Chamber directories, there’s a good chance Google isn’t sure which listing is correct and that’s not a good thing.

Google uses many data sources to try to get the most accurate picture. The image above from MOZLocal shows the interrelation of information sourced between data aggregators, directories, and search engines in the US.

The last thing Google wants to do is send someone to the wrong address when they search for a local business.

Above is an example of a local business that has multiple inconsistent citations online. The name is spelled out differently, there are three different phone numbers and at least two different addresses.

I’m certainly not picking on this business – In my experience, some sort of inaccurate data is out there for most businesses.

Use a tool like MozLocal and see just how bad this problem is for your business.

Once you determine there are a few inaccurate, inconsistent and incomplete listings use MozLocal, BrightLocal , WhiteSpark or Yext to clean listings and suppress inaccurate duplicates that often occur.

You might also want to check out this list of other local directories by city and this list of industry-specific directories .

This step alone can do more for your local listings than any other aspect of local SEO.

Create local SEO content

This one should be obvious but it kind of isn’t.

If you think about it, when you create a brochure and hand it to a prospect that pretty much know that you work in their city. But, when you create content online, you need to go over and above to spell out where you do your work.

Now, it’s easy to get spammy listing lots of local content and that can hurt you as much as help you, but you certainly should talk about where you work and in some cases have specific pages with case studies for specific trade areas, suburbs, and neighborhoods.

Don’t forget to blog and post about local events and happenings. Using your blog to take about community, customer, and employee-related local news is a great way to spice up your local content in very authentic ways.

If you have multiple locations you may want to learn about and adopt what many SEO folks refer to as content silos for each location – here’s a great primer on local content silos .

Focus on reviews

Reviews have become another important form of content. As the statistic cited at the beginning of this post suggests, people increasingly rely on reviews to make decisions about the products and services they purchase.

So, while you need positive reviews for social proof, you also need them as a pillar of your local SEO efforts.

Google factors review activity as one of the elements that help determine what businesses show up in the 3-pack.

No, it’s not the only factor, but it’s an important one.

The graph above from a BrightLocal survey demonstrates just how important reviews have become in the purchase journey for local businesses. Just a few years go nearly 30% admitted they didn’t use reviews – today that number is 8%. Meaning – 92% of buyers regularly or occasionally rely on reviews when making a local buying decision.

Take a look at the businesses in the image above. Reviews are displayed and play a large role in what businesses are shown and for the consumer, what business are clicked. You must have at least 5 reviews for Google to display the review stars as a highlighting feature of local results – that alone makes it important to acquire reviews.

Reviews are harder to get than they should be. Even a business with raving fans must work to get those reviews from happy customers.

The key is to ask often and make it as easy as possible for your happy customers to log in to the sites that matter and leave a review. Sure you’ll take a glowing email testimonial from a customer, but far better to push for a Google, Yelp, Facebook or industry review. ( Check out this list of important industry review sites .)

You can always repurpose these reviews in email newsletters, on your site, or even hanging up in the store.

Many businesses are finding that they need to make review collection a process rather than leaving it to chance. Tools like Grade.us can help automate the process of review collection.

Take some time and make each of the five steps above a priority for your local business and you may find that local leads drawn from organic search can become your most potent lead generation channel.

The post The Local SEO Playbook – Your Guide to Local Rankings appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

“Do You Have Experience In Our Industry? No? Cool.”

Sat, 02 Jul 2022 04:17:00 GMT

The conversation was going well. We felt like we were connecting at the same level. The prospect had gotten to know me and appeared to feel great about my understanding of his process, goals, etc.

Then came the question. I’ve received it many times before.

“Do you have any experience in our industry?”

Years ago, this question might have flustered me or made me apologetic sounding. But with time comes perspective. And confidence that this shouldn’t matter. At all.

“No. I never have worked in your business. Frankly, for your business, I’m not even sure I know many people who would. It’s a narrow niche. But even if I did work in your business previously, it wouldn’t mean much.”

He was surprised by the honesty. But it’s the truth, which is: If push comes to shove and you can only choose one of the following two options, you should hire a writer with big talent who knows little about your industry versus a writer who has written for dozens of companies in your industry but limited talent in that he can’t write in a conversational manner toward other humans to save his life.

I have been a writer for 25 years. More often than not, I knew next to nothing about the industry I was about to write for. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

See, this comes with the territory of being a Copywriter. You don’t come in as an expert, whether you’re at an agency or on your own. You’re totally clueless, which is actually a good thing here. Why? Your mind is empty, waiting to be filled with knowledge – pounds of paper worth of knowledge and digital files aplenty. You take the “factory tour” whether it’s literally a factory or an office. You meet the people. You learn the processes. You absorb the history and appreciate where these folks have been as well as the passion behind the product or service they sell.

Maybe that’s a good thing, no? That you’re talking to someone with a blank slate, who asks questions rather than makes assumptions ? Someone who treats your business as the only one of its kind in the world and doesn’t try to use a template based on someone else’s business?

That’s why I don’t buy the whole “you should hire us because we know your business” play that brand and content specialists try to make.

If you’re in this category of agency, I hate to break it to you but you don’t own that like you think you do.

Non-specialists can get up to speed quickly on their business and the best ones will. Again, it’s been a way of life for me for a little over two decades. You think I walked in the door knowing about mutual funds, commercial wire, medical devices and Sheetrock? Give me a break.

So when you’re considering hiring an agency, listen good for what they’re going to do for YOUR business. Not all the things they did for other people that they’ll probably apply to you, intentionally or subconsciously.

Here’s why:

You have your own history.

Your own goals.

Your own diverse set of people.

Your own leadership team.

Your own products and services.

Your own culture.

Your own kind of ideal clients.

Therefore, no matter who you hire, you need to demand that your agency understands that . And by the way, showing up with a giant menu of all the things they do isn’t conveying a damn thing about understanding.

One more thing: You also need to demand that there’s a chemistry there. Be honest: It’s just us. Do you actually LIKE them? If not, who gives a crap who they’ve worked with. They’re going to be a pain in the ass to work with and make your life hell. And maybe you’ll be the same to them.

On the other hand, if you click like magic with someone, there’s a reason for that. Don’t ignore it. Don’t think it as a nice-to-have extra. It’s big. And if that person has the energy and track record to match, you’ll likely have a very enjoyable long-term relationship.

OK, NOW I have just one more thing. I know specialists. Plenty of them. And to distinguish them from the ones I’ve referred to (and possibly to prevent myself from getting punched in the face by any of them when I run into them), I will have you know that not one of them that I respect rests on the laurels of industry experience alone. They are passionate about customizing. They’re smart as hell. They believe in strategy over tactics. They’re genuinely understanding. And they have a system for success that just works. I would recommend any one of them wholeheartedly. Because while they know “the business,” it’s what they know about marketing that they bring together that makes them extraordinary.

So maybe I know your business. Maybe I don’t. Or maybe I’ve worked with a close enough cousin of an industry. But there are other ingredients you really need to factor in anyway.

Can’t get past that? Well, golly. I’d say you’re playing it safe, but if industry experience is the only real criteria you’re going on, it’s more like you’re playing it stupid.

The post “Do You Have Experience In Our Industry? No? Cool.” appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

Defeating The Energy Vampires

Fri, 24 Jun 2022 18:53:00 GMT

“ The Client Is Always Right ,” they say proudly.

Nah.

If the client is a soul-sucking, verbally abusive monster who makes you feel less than dirt, they’re not right. They’re Energy Vampires and you need to kill them. Not literally, of course. I mean fire them. Tell them to exit, stage left, out of your life forever.

“Oh, but they represent XXX in billing.”
Yep. And you know what else? They KNOW it. That’s the worst part of all. So they’re not even clients anymore. They’re bullies. They want everything done right now because they represent that much money or a percentage of your billings. And you let them know with your behavior that says, “ Thank you sir, may I have another? ” Anything to make them happy.

But you’re not happy. And whatever little deal you want to make with yourself that a certain client brings in dollars, they may not bring in anything else. And dollars, at least in my point of view, are not anywhere near enough. If you have an Energy Vampire of a client, your staff probably hates you for not having the guts to fight for their needs. That should do wonders for retention. But hey, you give them great benefits…which means less than nothing to their daily functionality and joy.

I’ll bet you don’t get a bunch of referrals from the Energy Vampire either, do you?

Maybe that’s a good thing since they’re awful non-humans who will stick to their own kind, but still, shouldn’t they want to refer you if the relationship has been satisfying? Or, let me guess – they think you should just be happy having their business.

Oh yes! This person who treats me awfully is giving me money! What a joy entrepreneurialism is! We can book you for a Ted Talk entitled, “How I Sold My Soul, Got Divorced, Lost My Kids’ Love And Will Die Early Just To Have More Money This Month.”

Speaking of death, which is the contribution the Energy Vampire is making toward your health, do you think this lovely individual will come to your funeral? I’m being 100% serious. Would they feel your loss? Would they take off the time to attend your service? And above all, would they CRY?

Let me answer that for you: They. Will. Not. They won’t cry. They won’t show up. They won’t care about the impact on your family for more than 5 seconds before they think about how it impacts them, if it does at all. I wouldn’t be shocked if they never sent a condolence card or made a contribution to a charity.

A valued coach of mine, Scott Hansen, once shared this thought with me:

Out of all the people you will meet, engage with, impact, teach, parent, love, touch, etc….only 10 of them will cry at your funeral. And if it rains, half of them will show up to your burial.”

I want you to think about that for a moment. Who are those 10 people who will cry at your funeral? Not your Energy Vampire of a client. No way in hell.

This is why I must have clients that I care about. You cannot do your best work without a genuine care for others. It is vital to being true to who I am and to my integrity. Nothing is “transactional” about the relationship. And because I am that much “all in,” I expect my clients to be somewhere in the vicinity of care and commitment. I don’t want Energy Vampires. I want people I sincerely enjoy being around and admire for the passion they have for their craft. They want to be better all the time. They know they have things to learn and they respect what I can teach them or bring to the table as their marketing partner. They don’t think they’re experts on marketing because of what their kid in college told them or what a random person at a networking group told them or the presentation they saw or the one seminar they attended. They want to improve. But they know where they are and they know where I am. Anything different and they might as well pretend they know how to sew up a body on the surgeon’s table just because they watched a medical drama on TV last night.

That kind of fascination with shiny object tools and flavor of the month advice speaks to respect for you. Plain and simple. And if you don’t have their respect, you don’t need their business.

How do you spot them earlier? For what it’s worth, here’s the way I do it in no time:

This life is too short for us to put up with anybody and everybody who believes their dollars allow them to be assholes. No thanks. We like to keep a quota of zero Energy Vampires here. So whether they come in like that or turn that way over time, you know what to do. Be brave. And then drive a stake right through the heart of their overconfidence that they can treat you any way they please. There’s another force of kindness and good right around the corner you can spend your valuable hours on instead. And they’re just waiting to appreciate you so much more.

The post Defeating The Energy Vampires appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

Ready To Hire A Marketing Consultant? Here’s 10 Things To Look For.

Fri, 17 Jun 2022 17:33:00 GMT

The post Ready To Hire A Marketing Consultant? Here’s 10 Things To Look For. appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

Agencies Offering Too Many Side Dishes With The Meal

Fri, 10 Jun 2022 16:58:00 GMT

I recently came across a firm that claims supreme expertise in brand strategy, content, graphic design, web development, SEO, advertising, public relations, video and business operations.

Oh really. Is that all?

Some web development firms say they are also experts in SEO. Fair enough. But oh, by the way, they also do content and graphic design and strategy too.

My, where do you ever find the time to be absolutely brilliant in these five different areas at once?

I believe many of these folks do have genuine talent. In one thing. Maybe two.

The rest of the items they list? I don’t think they’re necessarily bad in those areas. Just not as good as the core one or two. And that’s where the problem starts.

Let me ask you: If you go into surgery to have your appendix removed, would you like to have a doctor who can technically perform the surgery because he watched someone do it a few times and it’s not a procedure he’s done very often or a doctor who has done that surgery 2000 times before?

Personally, I’m going with the expert over the guy who can “do that too.”

Every time ad agencies, PR firms, marketing firms, web development shops and more speak about all those extra side dishes they bring to the table, they’re representing an area that they know they’re not as strong in but Heaven forbid that they say it is something they can’t do. Or can’t do as well as what they’re very good at.

Herein lies the issue. It’s not about what you CAN do. It’s about what you straight up ROCK in. And if you’re making a laundry list, I’m skeptical by the time you get to Item #3 and calling BS by Item #4.

People who do this are not being honest with themselves about their true strengths. I suspect that for several of them, it’s a money grab. Even worse, they’re not being honest with clients about what they’re fantastic in and what they don’t do as well.

Trying to say you “do it all” isn’t good branding. It’s some jack-of-all-trades talk that stands for nothing.

I just don’t believe that people can be that awesome in 17 different things. If we want to perfect our craft, we can be better and better at one or two things.

Let’s think back hundreds of years ago. You had villages where there was a tailor, a butcher, a baker, etc. One shop had one specialty. If you had an issue, you knew which shop to go to. It was that simple. I don’t ever recall hearing of Ye Olde We Have Everything Shoppe.

“We’re a marketing agency.”
People in our industry say it so often. But what is that, really? Could that really be any more bland and broad? What meaning does it have without further qualification? A marketing agency for what? For who? Anybody with a pulse and dollar?

“We’re a digital marketing agency.”
Ah. That’s much clearer since practically any business that would like to be relevant to other humans should be operating in the digital space in some capacity anyway. So again, you work with anybody. Which is not good.

“We provide everything from branding to web design to startup incubation to storefront development for startups and long-standing companies.”
So you do a lot of things for a lot of people. Congratulations. I still have no idea what you’re actually the best at. Just PICK ONE OR TWO and plant your flag in the ground and say, “Hell yes, we are the best at this and we have the goods to prove it. It is what we live and breathe. And if you need something outside of that scope, we will refer you to someone we like and trust for that.”

I didn’t ask your agency what you provide. I’m asking you what you’re the best at. And you’re not the best at all of those things. You couldn’t possibly be .

Those 8-10 extra side dishes you listed are distracting people from the main course of what they came for.

By the way, here’s another residual effect you may not have considered on the way to filling your capabilities listing with 12 commas: The more you get into the laundry list of things you can do, the fewer Strategic Partners you may be able to have. So rather than bring in someone whose business is built around that area 24/7, you limit your opportunity to have a partner for new business referrals by keeping it yourself and getting by (and thereby limiting the client too).

I have 2 things I believe I do very, very well: Content Development and Brand Strategy.

Within those two core competencies, I have the ability to use all of the writing, creative direction and strategic skills I need. Plus, those two areas are always evolving, with new tools and trends to learn about. I have the passion for those as it’s what I love most and it keeps me busy. I’ve known those two things like the back of my hand for years and I can look anybody in the eye and have the utmost confidence in delivery of those services. What else is there?

I would encourage you to think this way: If it’s what you are passionate about , there is a demand for it and it’s a constantly shifting niche that challenges you to stay abreast of its developments…how many more areas like that one do you need?

If the theory is that it takes 10,000 hours to be an expert in one thing and we use a standard work week, it would take roughly 5 years to be an expert in ONE area . But you don’t stop learning when you get to Year 5, because otherwise you’d go stale, right? So you have to invest time on top of those 5 years to maintain your expertise. You never stop.

“OK, but what if we have a bunch of specialists for different things under one roof? Then we can say we’re really good in all those things then, right?”

No.

For the sake of argument, let’s say you’ve assembled an All-Star team of talent. One, it’s probably not going to last for very long because if those people are so incredible, they’re going to move on. Maybe due to ego, leadership opportunity, pay, outside factors, etc. Two, it’s highly unlikely that they’re all equally magnificent. So if you cater to speaking to the greatness of all those people, you still can’t tell me the one or two things that your agency does best because apparently you’re just the bees knees in everything. And once again, that’s harder to remember.

The only way that’s practical is to go narrow and deep. Not wide and shallow.

Wait a minute. Doesn’t this also apply to a lot of businesses that try to be all things to everyone?

Yes. It absolutely does.

Generalists are losing out there. Partially because they’re getting lost in the crowd of do-it-alls who stand for nothing in particular. Aim to join the ranks of the specialists. It’s more fun, more distinguishable and more genuine. And if you’re truly exceptional, it’s more than enough.

The post Agencies Offering Too Many Side Dishes With The Meal appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

The Future Favors The Nimble Agency

Fri, 03 Jun 2022 16:13:00 GMT

Big or small, traditionally focused or digitally focused, only one kind of agency will be left standing in the future:

The nimble one.

There is a grim future for agencies that have a process that looks like so:

Writer and designer team get Creative Brief.

Writer and designer concept, concept, concept, concept, concept…

Eureka! They stumble across an idea they love. Brilliant.

They present to their Creative Director.

Revise, revise, revise, revise, revise, revise, revise, revise, revise.

Think he’ll like it now? Hopefully so.

Re-present to Creative Director.

Looks good. Except just change this, this, this, this and this.

Writer and designer change all that stuff.

Cool. Now they present it to Executive Creative Director.

Nope. Won’t fly. Start over.

Writer and designer utter 500 curse words under breath toward ECD.

Concept, concept, concept, concept.

Present again to Creative Director.

Present to ECD.

Present to account person.

Present to account person over that account person.

Revise, revise, revise, revise…doesn’t the client hate blue? We should change that. Well, even though this is technically something the audience will never care about, we should probably put that in too. But let’s ask 3 other people to make sure. Joe sent Mary an e-mail on this to confirm and he’s waiting to hear back since she talked to that client in the initial meeting and he wasn’t there.

In the meantime, more changes.

Revise, revise, revise, revise.

Rehearse presentation to client many times over.

(Wow. And this is just to get out the door of the agency, huh? Sure as hell hope it’s stellar work by now.)

Present to client.

She pretty much likes it. Just a few changes to make and it’s good to go.

Back to the agency.

Revise, revise, revise, revise, revise.

Back to the client.

Almost there, just a few more things to tweak.

Revise, revise, revise, revise, revise, revise, revise.

Photo shoot. Who do we know? Him? Her? Them? Let’s take a look at a few different options. Better yet, let’s have 3 meetings on it before we decide.

Locations – where are we going to go based on the budget?

Meet, meet, meet, meet, meet.

Choose photographer.

Wow, so many options. I’m sure this won’t take long at all for us to settle on just one.

Color corrections. Tweak, tweak, tweak, tweak. Can we get this yellow more yellow? Can we get this red less purple and more red?

Oh, it’s not a print ad we’re talking about? A radio spot then?

Let’s listen to a bunch of demos.

Choose the talent.

Schedule the session.

Can you put a little more smile in your voice?

Edit, edit, edit, edit.

What’s that? It’s a video, you say? OK then. Edit, edit, edit, edit, edit, edit.

How’s the sound quality?
How’s the video quality?
Let’s go through several rounds of back and forth internally.

Who saw it? Did Jim see it? Did Lisa see it? Did Bill see it? Did Ann see it? What did she think? On the email, did you CC her and him and everyone but their dogs and cats? What did he think? I heard he liked it for the most part but had just a few tweaks. Oh crap. You know what that means.

Tweak, tweak, tweak, tweak, tweak.

Eventual client approval.

Media placement. Negotiations. Phone calls and emails fly back and forth.

One ad produced.

So how long did that take?

Two months?

Three months?

Maybe more?

This process of production doesn’t work anymore. It literally doesn’t fit with the actual living world around it. It is the comet that is going to kill certain agency dinosaurs. Some of these slow-moving, methodical brontosauruses are dead already.

The rest of us in touch with Planet Earth will find a way to speak on behalf of clients in a way that balances creativity with a more timely approach. Put another way, we are able to say a lot more messages of relevance in the time you take to generate one message. One very expensive message .

Sure, it’s going to run many times over the next several months. OK. Congratulations. It’s still one message.

Meanwhile, once the dinosaur finally presents the completed ad to the world and it gets written up in trade publications and the creative team dreams of awards and the Executive Creative Director takes a picture with the client, one simple fact will remain:

That one ad, no matter how good or how bad, will have a very limited shelf life.

People may very well like it. But it still will have a definitive expiration date that may not justify the amount of work gone into creating it. It won’t run for years. If it’s like most, it will run for months. Heck, some even run just one or two times! It is a home-run-or-strike-out proposition. And nobody hits a home run every time out. But they can hit a lot of singles, doubles and triples.

Yet, I still believe there is very much a place in the world for traditional media. There is great power and beauty in a print ad done well, a radio spot said compellingly, a TV spot that captivates our senses and a direct mail piece that delights when we open it.

But the inefficient, long and winding production process that goes into creating it will be its undoing. Its process can’t compete with the fluidity of digital media and the immediacy of what we demand from brands.

Its only hope is an agency that breaks down the internal walls of approval and can get out of its own damn way so that great work can get out the door of the agency more frequently.

We have always strived for this in agencies. But now, more than ever in our fast moving world, quality will mean the life or death of an agency. We don’t need factories that churn out crap work more frequently either because that’s not a solution. Unless your solution includes miserable creative people who are continually looking for a job.

While some agencies can spend months coming up with one grand message, I will take a walk in a city full of millions of people who expect to access a website, view a Facebook page, connect with a colleague on LinkedIn, read a blog post, watch a video, share a photo, hold a Google+ Hangout or listen to a podcast on their smartphone or tablet – within only a few seconds.

Our demand for higher quality content from brands sooner rather than later isn’t a phase or describing some select group of people. It is the way of our world.

Quality in an agency system that lets better work rise to the top without overthinking, internal politics and logjams is the only hope. That takes three T’s: Talent, Trust and Technology:

Talent: You can’t fake talent at the Creative Director level. It comes from someone who knows a great idea when they see one. They don’t let logistics and technicalities bounce that idea off the table too soon. They don’t need to show it around the agency and collect a million opinions to know if it’s great. It requires the talent to write a Creative Brief that isn’t comprised of two sentences but gives the team real guidance (without confining them by telling them exactly what to create). And it takes the talent to understand that you’re not only in the business of serving the client but representing a hard-working team back at the agency that is counting on you to present brilliantly. It takes a special person to be creative, clear and captivating. You’ve either got it or you don’t.

By the way, you need talented vendors too. Not all printers, for example, are created equal. If you go with a trade printer who can get you a too-good-to-be-true deal, you probably shouldn’t be surprised when they screw up your business card that calls for rounded corners, unique textures and fancy die cuts.

Trust: You can’t fake trust. If you have the talent in the form of the best people in the right roles, how much second guessing and back-and-forth should there really be? Or if you have talented people who also have egos the size of Mt. Rushmore, there can be a lack of trust (and humility) there too.

Technology: The first two above are hard. They’re human elements. This one is much easier. When you have project management software like Basecamp (we use this at Caliber and love it – as do our clients), you are literally putting the team on the same page. Everyone can see the latest files, discussions, timelines, etc. It’s a beautiful thing. Assuming everyone actually uses it, it virtually eliminates the “Did you send me that latest version?” question that comes so often with conventional e-mail. This and other tools like it only make internal and external agency communication easier and faster.

When talent, trust and technology are humming along, you not only eliminate unnecessary steps in a cumbersome production workflow. You have a better culture and better relationships.

It’s not a big agency thing. It’s not a small agency thing. It’s not a traditional agency thing. It’s not a digital agency thing.

It’s an intelligent agency thing.

Because whether you realize it or not, life is happening while your ad is in production.

The future favors the nimble.

The post The Future Favors The Nimble Agency appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

You’re Ignoring This Client The Most.

Fri, 27 May 2022 16:12:00 GMT

There’s a popular excuse that many agencies make for themselves when it comes to developing their own brand that has to do with “the cobbler’s shoes” and basically how we’re all like a shoemaker who makes shoes for every customer except his own children. I should know. I used to make this excuse myself. But with a semi-embarrassed grin that was actually more of a badge of courage, gosh darn it, you’ve got to service those clients that pay the bills!

I’d keep making this excuse over and over as if someone would take pity on me, “Wow, it’s so admirable that he services all those clients but doesn’t do anything for himself.”

Yeah. That pity party’s not coming.

That’s when I realized: You ARE a client that helps pay the bill.

Think about it. What helps register a powerful impression that in turn helps generate leads? Your business card. Your website. Your blog. Your social networking. Your “real world” networking. Your own professional development. These elements and more help your agency’s brand grow. So why would you kick all that to the bottom of the list every time?

We have to stop viewing ourselves as the last priority because we technically speaking don’t pay the bills via our own brand. That’s a huge mistake.

View your own brand as a client.

This is the only way an agency can treat its own brand with any measure of respect. If you see your own agency’s brand development as another client among your roster, you will make it more of a priority. If you see it as something you should get around to doing, it won’t go anywhere.

There will never be a good time to work on your own stuff. Never.

There may be peaks and valleys in the workflow, but something else will come up. And then your own stuff will be pushed again. The new rendition of the website, a brochure, videos, whatever is part of your self-promotional strategy. Easy to do? Oh no. Not by a longshot, trust me. Right now, in fact, I’m in the process of updating my own company website. Is that pulling me away from other client work? No. I’m not suggesting you ignore them for one second. You bet that makes for an interesting juggling act when it comes to incorporating agency self-promotion. Still, there’s something about adding your own brand to the list of other client brands on the traffic list that keeps it front and center.

I do know that when you add a new client, you make time for that new client, don’t you? You add it to the roster, give it the attention it deserves, meet with key people, strategize a plan of attack, execute for them. You find a way to make it work. So the whole “We don’t have enough time” song and dance is covering up for the fact that you don’t see yourself as a high priority.

Sure, this integration is a work in progress. I get that. But the key word is progress . Kicking your own brand to the bottom time after time isn’t progress. It’s treating your own client – one of your most satisfying, rewarding clients – like an afterthought.

Would you treat any other client with so much potential as an afterthought? I seriously doubt it. Then think about how you’re going to service the client within so much better on a regular basis.

A thought to help you begin? Don’t spew out a bunch of tactics that you’re going to start doing tomorrow. I don’t recommend that for my own clients (Facebook! Twitter! LinkedIn! And more!). Instead, consider this change in mindset as your very first step. Because if you don’t truly view yourself as a client, your effort will go nowhere fast.

Once your head is in the right direction, your strategy and ultimately, your tactics can follow.

Congratulations on your new client.

The post You’re Ignoring This Client The Most. appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

Carnival Barking and Rapid Fire Posting Chaos: Improving Online Communities From Within

Tue, 30 May 2017 18:35:00 GMT

There’s a Facebook community I was recently excited to join, led by one of of the people in our industry I truly respect.

Within two weeks, I found I had to leave it.

It wasn’t largely the group leader’s fault. It was the people who killed it from within. Why? The entire mission of the group was to be a helpful forum, where people could learn from one another. Admirable enough, right? I could go with that. There are always good things to learn from one another.

Well, to make a long story short, it was overrun by people who self-promoted themselves. All. The. Time. The number of people who genuinely were asking for help were outnumbered by the fools trying to stand out from the crowd by talking about themselves to no end. They’d sell first, second and third. Helpfulness wasn’t even on their agenda.

Let’s meet these people. Everyone, tell me a little bit about yourselves – after all, it’s what you do best – and how you screw up well-intended online communities like the one I just left.

The Carnival Barker
“Well, my mode of operation is that I’m going to come into your group and do N-O-T-H-I-N-G but promote my own group. That’s right. I actually have the cojones to say, “Hey everybody in this group. Let me tell you about my other group and you should follow this link to go there right now! Come one, come all!” 100% of what spills out of my mouth is related to my own promotion and I don’t give a crap about anyone else’s group.”

Dan Gershenson: Interesting. I noticed you have an upcoming event. Would you like to plug that? Never mind. You already do. It’s your reason for being. Let’s meet our next person.

The Rapid Fire Poster
“Look at me. I can post 5-10 times in a row on LinkedIn. That means I’m a guru. I must be smart. Hire me. See? I post a lot at once. There’s my picture many times. So I’m an Influencer. Did I mention I’m in the top 1% of LinkedIn users for connecting to everyone with a pulse? What’s a brand strategy?”

DG: Funny, I was wondering if something was malfunctioning with my LinkedIn account and that my only connection was you. Then I realized you’re hogging up the whole damn stream. By the way, do you blink between posts or is it that you don’t understand how to use Buffer properly? Because there are actually settings that enable you to do posts at other times of day. Just saying.

Who’s next? Sir? I’m over here. Are you aware there are other people than yourself? Can you hear me?

The Content Snooze Button
“I post about my own company in the news all the time, like the fact that our company is having a cocktail hour and that it’s Jan in Accounting’s birthday. I’m not talking about the compelling stuff that probably goes on around here, like a case study that makes for an interesting story people might want to read or an entrepreneurial idea that benefitted our culture that others may want to consider adopting for theirs. No, I’m talking about all sell, all the time. I never comment on anything. I don’t even “Like” anything. Because that’s what it’s about in being social – talking about, well, me. The less relevant to their world or captivating whatsoever, the better.

DG: Hey, I don’t know if you’re interested, but I have this article you might like to read about…

ENG: Why, is it about someone’s birthday in the office?

DG: No, but…

ENG: Don’t care.

DG: OK then. Moving along to our next person. I just connected to this gentleman and while we haven’t met personally, I just received a direct message from him. Let’s hear from him.

The Templatizer
“Hi you. How are you? Follow me. We do blah blah blah blah blah. I’m looking forward to knowing you and all that you do. Here’s my link.”

DG: I feel so close to you already.

Look fellas. Let’s take a time out. You’re flat out wrecking the nature and goodwill of online groups. It’s beyond the point of the fact that you don’t get it in your inward looking nature. Thanks to you, let’s call it what it is for the effect that your presence does to a Group:

A series of display ads. Not a community.

We can change this by commenting more. Sharing more of other people’s content of value. Just “ Liking ” more to show we appreciate thoughts other than our own. Just a little bit from each of us would help. Asking a question such as, “ Hi, I just helped a client finish a book and am now in need of a publisher to help publish it either traditionally or on Amazon. Does anyone in this group have someone they can recommend? ” (side note: I really do need this!). Even our quality of our shares should be better – don’t just post a link on your industry and call it a day – tell me why I should care and why you think it’s an important development so you can your own added thought.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not telling you to stop promoting items such as upcoming events your company is holding. My point is that the balance and quality I see from some people absolutely stinks and needs to changed immediately so that a good online community doesn’t turn into a self-promotional posting dump. That doesn’t show authority, collaboration or an openness to network with others.

Think about the best communities in our own physical world – they come from getting to know your neighbor, letting them borrow your rake, asking for help and inviting them over for a barbeque. They become more than just a name and face. They become friends you can speak highly of to others.

They become, you know, a relationship .

Let’s have more variety beyond the 1-way promotions that are completely devoid of story. I’ll bet you may surprise yourself and even find it to be far more fulfilling.

One final note: If you’re the host/moderator of such a community, it’s your responsibility to regularly monitor and step in if these behaviors above aren’t changed after a warning from you. Don’t let some bad apples spoil it for the rest.

Carnival Barker: Can we talk about the breakfast my group is having next Tuesday now?

DG: You’ve got to be kidding me.

The post Carnival Barking and Rapid Fire Posting Chaos: Improving Online Communities From Within appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

Prospecting: Separating The Believers From The Non-Believers

Wed, 26 Apr 2017 14:47:00 GMT

This scene from Mad Men sums up an important point for me about prospect relationship building.

There are Believers and there are Non-Believers. The difference is easier to spot than we make it.

As Don Draper says when explaining an ad campaign, “ You either have it in your heart or you don’t .”

Let’s apply this to new business relationships. As we know, prospecting for the complex sale can be sophisticated, time-consuming and take many “touches” before an actual invitation occurs to be face-to-face with someone. Getting through that door isn’t often a one-time effort unless you’re in the right place at the right time.

But now you finally get that first meeting – it may come from your initiative or them finding you. They invite you in to learn more.

Here’s where you separate The Believers from the Non-Believers.

By the end of your first meeting, after you’ve discovered enough about the challenge before you do an even deeper dive and they’ve learned a solid amount about you, you should have a good sense of whether the person wants to have a relationship with you. They believe in you or they don’t. If they don’t want to move forward, so be it, but at least you know. If they do want to move forward, are we talking the details of a relationship in our second meeting or are we shooting the breeze?

This isn’t decided by logical factors. This isn’t a tally sheet of points on an RFP (Oh really? You’re going to tell me I just missed out because I scored a 94 and my competitor scored a 97? Riiiiight.).

For all the laundry lists of virtue that agencies throw out there (experience, creativity, number of employees/locations, awards), these have value – but none of them are exclusively own-able.

Relationships are emotional decisions. They go with you because they like you . And if they like you, they believe in you. And if they believe in you long enough, they refer you.

That last one is important. If they’re not referring, they like you but don’t like you enough.

Let’s take a look at the typical pattern: You meet. You greet. Both parties get to know each other. If it makes sense to do so, you present / quote.

Then what happens?

Sometimes it’s a “We’ll get back to you.” “We’re still thinking about it.” “So and so is on vacation.” “We’ve got a fire to put out in the next few weeks but we’ll get to this.”

We’ve all encountered a response like this in some fashion or another. It’s not that we’re necessarily bad presenters or that it’s all on us. It just might be that they’re not equipped to make change. The key word is “make.” Some companies don’t want to make change. They just love the IDEA of change . Because that’s safe and even romantic to think about. There’s no risk with an idea or merely talking about what could be. So they talk and talk and talk and want to meet with you over and over and over again. You keep getting lured in ( “Oh wow! They’re bringing us back in for the fifth time! They must be really close to making a decision!” ).

And that can’t happen. Because you go from being potentially paid consultant/agency to free therapist .

People who want therapy are not serious prospects. They are Non-Believers. If they are stuck and you have presented what could be a smart, strategic way out of being stuck, they should not be comfortable with where they presently are. You are taking them to a place outside of that Comfort Zone, yes. But even in their slight discomfort, The Believer knows that this is a vital and important thing for the company, not something to be feared.

It should take no more than one meeting for a person to not only believe change is necessary but that it has to happen now. It should take no more than two meetings for that person to believe that you are the right person to enact that change.

Beyond this, you need to ask yourself if you’re dealing with a serious prospect or a tire kicker.

I’m not proud to admit it, but on more than one occasion, I’ve had a prospect I’d met and spoken with several times before keep me on the phone for an hour talking about their problems. That was stupid. There comes a point where you must say, “You know, I’d love to continue this chat but I typically bill people beyond the ___ minute. Is that something you’re comfortable with?”

You have it in your heart or you don’t.

Think about your favorite brands – what do they have in common about their customers? They’re more than customers. They’re giant fans. They’ll defend that brand to no end. They’ll come back again and again. They’ll tell others how wonderful that brand is.

They Believe in that brand. There is no middle ground. No Semi-Believers.

This doesn’t stop when they become clients.
Are we wrong to want to strive for Believers in our agency in a collection of clientele? I don’t think so. Imagine your agency with 100% Believers. Every one of them loves you. Trusts you. Refers you business and/or might very well be open to doing more business in the right circumstance. Can’t say enough good things.

What’s that? Some clients don’t do that? Which ones? Why? How can that be improved upon from here?

Of course this doesn’t mean they’re going to blindly agree to everything you say and do. Of course they’ll question or suggest changes. That’s normal. There’s a difference between sharing opinion and dictating, “This is what I want the ad to specifically say.” The former is still belief. The latter is not.

Believers want to be led, guided and educated. They are inspired to act now. They don’t want to just talk about it over and over and over. They don’t pretend to know everything or better than their own customer. And they see you as the expert that you are rather than being dragged kicking and screaming into new ideas or new technologies.

Look, some people just aren’t ready to go forward when the time comes. I can respect that, but you also have to have respect for yourself. The first and incredibly important step of liking someone isn’t something you have to think about over a period of several meetings and months. You just know it the first time. And you know what the concrete next steps are as a result.

You either have it in your heart or you don’t.

The post Prospecting: Separating The Believers From The Non-Believers appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

Telling Clients They Have – Gasp! – a Weakness or Two.

Sun, 02 Apr 2017 15:39:00 GMT

When you’re a position to have to tell a client that they have a weakness or two or seventeen, it’s not the easiest thing in the world to do. Someone asked me that recently: “So, um, what do you do when you have to tell a client that, uh, a few things they’re doing aren’t…quite…good?”

“You’re asking me how do I tell someone their baby is ugly?”

“Well, I’ve never heard it said that way.”

“It’s exactly like that. Because when someone is close to their brand, it’s their baby. Some people know that deep down, their baby isn’t perfect even when they talk about it to other people. And they’re right. After all, a baby is a human being and humans are far from perfect.”

Brands are far from perfect too. Yet we see cases all the time of when CEOs and aspiring entrepreneurs have fallen in love with their own product far too quickly.

They haven’t asked the tough questions.
They haven’t talked to their potential prospects and gotten their take.
They think they don’t have competition when the reality is they haven’t looked hard enough.
They think areas like sales and marketing will just develop with time and besides, this will just ‘sell itself,’ right?”

“So…you don’t hold back?”

“Not really. And I don’t feel bad about it one bit because I’m coming into it objectively. They’re not. If they want to disagree with me, I’ll live with that and respect their point of view, but I can’t live with sugarcoating it for someone who wants to believe it’s all sunshine and rainbows just because their new product is on the market or that they’ve got 32 locations or $X million in revenue or they’ve been in business for 25 years. These are all admirable things. But just looking at the positives is not strategizing. That’s blowing smoke up their you-know-what. I’ve tried to prevent myself from doing that as I’ve gotten more experienced and wiser.”

“But do you say that in a diplomatic way or do you say it harshly?”

“I try not to be mean in any way, really. Everyone has flaws, myself very much included. But the funny thing is that when I start to say, ‘OK, now that we’re going to talk about your weaknesses, I’ll try to be as kind as I can…’ Do you know what they say in response?”

“Don’t pussyfoot around. Give it to me straight.”

If you’re genuinely about client service, you don’t hide what they need to know for their own good from them. Unfortunately, there are some cheesy, service-with-a-smile-client-is-always-right people out there who don’t know how to do this because they’re too afraid. Plain and simple. No matter what they portray on the exterior, they’re just too afraid to offend, too afraid to lose their jobs, too afraid to lose the client, too afraid to do anything wrong. They don’t trust themselves and their experience to say what’s in the best interests of a brand. And not only will that fear hurt themselves, but ironically, it will actually hurt the very clients they claim to serve.

Need an extra incentive? If you don’t tell them their weaknesses, their competition will find those weaknesses and exploit them.

Better relationships are built on true honesty. That means delivering all of the news – the good, the bad and yes, the ugly. And then showing them how to turn that something ugly into something far prettier.

The post Telling Clients They Have – Gasp! – a Weakness or Two. appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

Branding Like A 2-Year-Old

Sun, 12 Mar 2017 20:12:00 GMT

“I help companies tell more exciting stories about themselves and the people they help.”

That is about as close to the explanation of what I do, created for a 2-year-old, that I can make.

I was thinking about this while looking at a picture of my nephew, who is literally a 2-year-old. He’s a genius in my book. But of course, even he needs some simple explanations some times about how things work in this new world he’s experiencing.

As a parent, a grandfather/grandmother, Uncle, Aunt, friend, etc., surely you’ve tried to explain something complex to a very small child. And in that instance, you know that making things so simple compared to how you’re used to describing them is pretty darn hard, isn’t it?

My college professor once told me over and again, “In Advertising, you never tried so hard to make something so simple.” He was right then and still is.

Whether you work on the client side or the agency side, whether you work in traditional media or online media, try this exercise: Think about explaining what you do to a 2-year-old. Or, if that’s too hard, think about explaining it to these kids in the latest AT&T commercial. Or the role of Aaron Rodgers in the latest State Farm commercial – the poor guy is having a hard time explaining himself to kids in a classroom and he plays football.

https://youtu.be/UyDXUjU7sZk

It’s a crowd you can’t use industry lingo in. You can’t speak jargon in. They won’t be impressed. They probably won’t even understand it.

Now here’s the crazy part:

It’s not all that different than the audience you’re trying to speak to.

I’m not trying to be insulting in saying that whatsoever. I’m saying that speaking on our terms rather than trying to relate to their world is a recipe for the attention span wandering quickly.

Some call this Dumbing It Down. Whoa there. Not so fast. We can be clear in our storytelling without losing our sophistication. As I think about my 2-year-old nephew, he’s got a ton of books (yes, these things with actual pages in them, not an iPad) and the ones he chooses to have read to him are the ones that are the most magical to him. The story is captivating and easy to understand. The illustrations are unique. I like to think the tone in which it’s being read is important too.

I can hold his attention for a solid 3-4 minutes, which for that age is amazing. Imagine having that ability with your own audience. Anything over 30 seconds and you’re doing better than most TV spots.

“Are you saying I literally have to say things in their most basic form?”

No. I’m saying to think about how the human mind works. Think about how we make decisions. When we’re making purchases, even of the most complex variety, there is one gigantic motivator that strikes an emotional chord.

You can hide behind bullet points and machine specs and in-depth research that suggests a multitude of positives that should be listed.

Doesn’t matter. There’s just one thing that makes people want to buy. You either hit on it or you don’t. And when you do, it’s about eloquently and powerfully conveying how you have that one thing more so than the other guy.

Anything else that gets in the way of that one thing is a distraction. Which is why it’s so important during strategic planning to strip away all the other jargonistic industry lingo you could be saying and instead envision yourself having a real, honest conversation with that potential buyer.

I have seen respected CEOs have a hard time with this. I have seen those with MBAs and Doctoral degrees have a hard time. And people with 30+ years of experience in their industry. It’s not their fault, really. It’s what can happen when we get so insulated within our own company walls in what’s standard communication (think about how many abbreviations you use that are specific to your business or industry) that we forget there’s a level of Plain English that needs to be spoken in a captivating manner to the world outside.

Your customer may not be a 2-year-old. But you have to communicate company virtues on their turf, around their needs, on their time, in their tone. Not expect them to figure it all out on yours.

It’s that simple. And yet, just that complicated. Need a hand finding that insightful nugget and then explaining why your treasure is important to someone of value? Let me know.

The post Branding Like A 2-Year-Old appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

Social Media Gurus with No Social Skills

Fri, 17 Feb 2017 16:19:00 GMT

Here’s an ironic moment – we’re sitting across from a person at dinner who is chatting non-stop and loudly about trends in social media. She’s talking about the changes in Facebook search, the Recommendation she just made for someone on LinkedIn, Google’s next big move, etc.

And yet, she never looks up once from her smartphone at her own family. Never puts the phone down. She actually has a fork in one hand and her smartphone in the other.

That doesn’t make her cool. Or cutting edge. Or in the know. It’s actually kind of sick and pathetic.

If we’re to truly understand how to interact with people and build communities, we have to know how to…interact with people.

Hey, it’s really awesome that you know how to grow someone’s social media presence. Kudos to you that you know all about the latest and greatest happenings in social media. That’s important stuff and I’m not being a smartass about that.

But if you don’t know how to have real conversations with real people outside of your smartphone/tablet/computer, you are a social media expert with no social skills. The problem with that beyond the fact that it hurts you in building genuine, meaningful relationships is that we’re not just in the “Like” Building business or obsessed with getting more Twitter Followers.

We’re here to understand the emotional reasons of what makes people tick. What makes them laugh, cry, share certain things and feel intensely motivated to comment. And yes, what makes them purchase things repeatedly and keep them loyal to certain brands.

If we don’t understand that, we’re missing an understanding of brand strategy and messaging toward the very people who could be customers and advocates. If we can’t converse well with people in the physical world, how genuine can our conversations be in the digital space? Maybe some of us can fake it and be immersed in social media without developing social skills…but do we really want to go that route with such a lack of perspective? Do we really think that makes for creating better content?

This isn’t preachy, “remember your family, friends and other important people in your life” stuff. This is about understanding how to communicate with those who have flesh and bone, not just a Twitter handle. Glad you caught Mark Zuckerberg’s press conference on the latest Facebook rollout, but did you also have a dialogue with a person who could be your next strategic partner or customer? How often does that dialogue occur in a restaurant, coffee shop or just a setting that isn’t digital?

To me, brand communication isn’t filled with jargon or what the CEO wants to hear. It’s how you make a connection with the audience that makes them feel something. It’s not about being present but listening and asking questions. It’s not about assuming we know everything about the other individual but coming in with an inquisitive thirst for learning more so we can tailor our conversations in a more personal way – the way that makes someone say, “ They really get me .”

To get there, you’ve got to look up from the screen more often and look a human being in the eyes.

The post Social Media Gurus with No Social Skills appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

How To Ensure Your Very Best Meeting Experience

Thu, 19 Jan 2017 18:21:00 GMT

Conference call group:

“Can you repeat that again, Rick? I couldn’t quite hear that last part.”

Rick: “Oh, sorry. I was going through a tunnel. What I was saying was as;dlkfjad;flkjasd;gajk;dklafj;daslfjkdsz;laskjf;.”

Conference call group:
Ummm…yeah. That’s still not quite coming through.”

You know and I know it’s happening all the time. It’s happening on conference calls. It’s happening on Skype. It’s happening on Google Plus. It’s happening on Webinars. And I know it’s not just happening to me. So let’s not pretend for all of our innovation that we’ve got perfection at work because we don’t. We can see and hear each other. Congratulations. We can do things we couldn’t do in 1984. But we’re not there yet.

That’s why I’m proud to announce the greatest, clearest, most satisfying experience in meetings ever. It’s dependable. The communication is clearer. It’s like I can see the person right in front of me. Wait. I literally can see the person in front of me and it’s not a hologram:

It’s called Face-To-Face Meetings.

I know it’s pretty wild stuff. See, in a Face-to-Face meeting, you’re actually there. Not kind of there. Not on a screen or listened to over crappy audio where I have to lean in to hear you like I’m a 99-year-old.

“Oh, but that’s not practical.”

Driving isn’t practical? Getting on a plane isn’t practical? That’s hilarious.

You paid for a tricked-out conference room. You can pay for a plane ticket or gas money. Maybe it’s time you asked yourself a hard question about what kind of company you want to be: The kind where people are literally seen or the kind that lives in Virtualville.

I love this ad from United so many years ago that still rings as true today as it did then:

Yes. This is harder and more expensive. But guess what? The one thing you never have to worry about in going belly-to-belly with someone is the quality of the audio or the picture. Ever. Trying to present your work is hard enough. You don’t need the extra hurdle of lousy technology to get in your way for a second.

The irony here is I love the heck out of new gadgetry and technological tools. But in this department, technology hasn’t caught up. And it needs to nail it for us 10 out of 10 time s. But no, you’re on a PC and I’m on a Mac so our stuff can’t talk to each other. Did you bring the right cord for this projector or did you leave it back at the office? The browser is too slow. The PowerPoint isn’t showing the slides the right way.

Hell, I was recently at an otherwise enjoyable conference and a presenter cued up a video that DIDN’T FIT THE SCREEN.

I mean…come on now. This is the best we can do in today’s day and age? REALLY?

Here’s the thing that happens in a Face-to-Face that doesn’t happen too often in the other applications: Follow-up questions by other people in the room who feel just a tad more comfortable raising those questions because they don’t have to scream into a speakerphone or try to be seen on-screen. And those little follow-up inquiries are big. Because they actually make that person feel that much more involved in the conversation.

In the agency business, we romanticize the idea of the Golden Age of our business characterized by “Mad Men.” Whether you’re talking about David Ogilvy or Don Draper, you’re talking about personal selling at its finest. Good ol’ handshakes, meet and greets and hopefully knocking their socks off in person .

But reserving that personal touch for the pitch alone may be why some clients feel as though a bait-and-switch occurs once the business is awarded.

Hey, what happened to that Creative Director and the Agency President? That was just for show, huh? Oh well. I guess we’ll see them again when it’s time for the account to go into review.

Relax. I’m not suggesting you toss out your iPhone, iPad or anything else that starts with an “i” like an Amish person.

What I am suggesting is that we tend to use these as a default method of communication rather than remember that our very best relationships are still built on human interaction every chance we get. It’s not always convenient, that I grant you. It can be a downright pain in the butt to get from here to there. But once we do get from here to there, that journey can be the foundation of a longer lasting client relationship.

What are we really talking about here that’s so much harder? Another hour of travel by car? Another four hours in the air somewhere in the country for a meeting today or tomorrow?

What’s it worth to your business to literally go the extra mile?

Wouldn’t you like to find out?

I’m in Chicago but can meet anywhere for a qualified prospect. If you’d like more information on what that kind of person looks like for me and vice versa, what you’re looking for in a brand and content strategist so we’re making the most of each other’s time, connect with me at dan@chicagobrander.com and I’d love to chat with you about the possibilities for getting together.

The post How To Ensure Your Very Best Meeting Experience appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

5 Ways To Make An Agency Creative Feel Like An Award Winner.

Wed, 05 Mar 2014 15:46:00 GMT

“Inside the mind of a writer is a truly terrifying experience.”
– Robert DeNiro at the Oscars, March 2014

Ouch, Bobby. As creatives, are we that insecure and in need of constant praise? Really? Well, maybe we’ve got the confidence and passion but like anyone, we do need to be recognized.

That’s where many agencies can maximize a terrific opportunity to show they care about the work, the work, the work. If it’s all about the work, recognize it. “Oh, do we really need to give everybody a cookie or sticker?” says The Insensitive Account Director. No. But if you did a good job in hiring talent at all, you’d know their work is worthy of recognition. Not cheesy recognition (“you win a free apple!”) but real recognition.

1. Framed Work On The Walls
Client walks into your agency and go into your conference room. Spends 3-5 minutes there. They can spend that time looking at exposed brick or they can look at some actual, real work. Work that inspires. Work that makes them laugh. Work that’s provocative. On the way in and out of the meeting they also see work hung in the hallways. Most importantly, that’s the stuff that your creatives see too – the stuff you live and breathe and celebrate. By the way, imagine a great piece your agency did as the jumping off point for a discussion vs. the typical small talk about how you took the kids up to Wisconsin for the weekend. Sorry, I fell asleep by the time that last sentence was completed.

2. Work On The Online Walls (i.e. Your Portfolio)
How is this hard? You choose a piece, you upload it. You write something about it. Done. Oh yeah – and you give credit to the creatives who made it happen. Every single one of them, plus account and production folks. Come on. I know you’ve got the time for this.

3. Give Credit In Front Of The Client
A client asks, “Who did this great line/this visual?” The standard answer is typically, “Oh, we ALL did. It was a TEAM effort.”

I know it’s a feel-good thing to say that, but it’s also perfectly OK to say, “Steve did the design and Luke did the copy. These guys did a really great job, didn’t they? ” This is your team. You brought them on. OWN IT. Why shouldn’t they be pointed out for making you look good?

4. Give Credit In Front Of The Agency
You may saying, “Oh, but how can we do that, Dan? You’re saying we should pull together a bunch of departments to just recognize our own people?” You’re overthinking this. It’s called email. You type it out. You give it some careful thought and consideration. And then you send it. Even if it’s only to your own department to say something like, “You know, I don’t always say it often enough but I’d like to personally thank (NAME) for (THING THEY DID TO MAKE YOU LOOK GOOD). I’m confident our client will love the result but even before that, I’m very proud of what we’ve put together with great sacrifice to time at home and sleep.”

If this is somehow too difficult for someone to do, it’s a problem of ego, laziness, fear, caring or a combination of all four.

5. The Internal Awards Show
Do you just want to rely on judges who don’t know your work? Creatives need tender loving care too and it’s not beneath you to celebrate their brilliance. Most Creative. The Best Ad The Client Should’ve Bought But Didn’t. Best Status Update That Uses Talking Cats. I don’t care.

It’s not that winning outside awards don’t feel great. They do. They really, really do. But is it possible that a great feeling could also be experienced by the recognition you bestow on them within your own walls? If done right and actually meaningful with something the creative craves as a reward, the answer is yes, quite possibly. Which might save you thousands of dollars in entry fees and travel accommodations. Hearing praise from you, hopefully someone they very much respect, isn’t too shabby either. Why? Unlike those total strangers, you’re the one reviewing their work each and every day.

If you notice a pattern here, it’s that each of these ways requires you to give them some PDA: Public Display of Affection. No, I don’t mean making out with them. I mean publicly declaring your affection for their work to others.

There shouldn’t be any degree of risk in doing this if you truly believe in your people.

Because ultimately, you just have no idea how much of a long way a kind word and a kind action can go in the impact of someone’s day, someone’s focus, someone’s loyalty and heck, even someone’s life .

We all could use that feeling a little more often, don’t you think?

What other ways have you awarded creatives in your agency? Share them!

The post 5 Ways To Make An Agency Creative Feel Like An Award Winner. appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

Finding Your Negotiating Point Of No Return – And Your Soul.

Thu, 27 Feb 2014 14:31:00 GMT

Sometimes in one of the networking groups I help lead, we have 15-20 minutes for an engaging topic of discussion relevant to entrepreneurs. This week, one raised an important question:

“Is anybody else tired of haggling to death over pricing? If we’re small businesses and the lifeblood of our economy, why are we beating ourselves up?”

It’s a very fair question. Rather than bemoan the problems and challenges that come with haggling over price, let’s do something about it. See, if you know who you want to deal with and who you don’t as well as if you know what your value is, then negotiating doesn’t have to be the experience you might regularly dread.

It’s your choice whether or not to play. And for how long.

Get a pad of paper out. List the 10 best clients you ever had. What do they have in common?

Then do the same for the 10 worst clients you ever had. What united them? What did they say? How did they act during the time you were putting a deal together?

Knowing that you’d obviously prefer to deal with the qualities conveyed in the 10 best, what does that say about somebody who displays little to none of those qualities?

These are decisions you are allowed to make and should make in advance of negotiation. Unfortunately, it’s always assumed in this “tell me what you’re going to do for me” world that you want to work with a total stranger you meet at a networking event. No, Chief. Why don’t you tell me a little more about you so we can learn if we’re even possibly a fit first . I have a stable of clients that have to meet a certain criteria and I want to know how much of that criteria you match. Pompous? No. It’s called valuing my own brand and my own time – and believe it or not, it’s about valuing yours too.

So ask yourself some very important strategic questions:

Are they really the kind of client you WANT?
Seriously. Do you know who you do not want as a client? Sometimes when people talk about the criteria of a good client, they chuckle and say, “Anybody with money.” Ha. Stop. No, seriously. STOP. You don’t take anybody with money. You take people with money who help get you where you want to go as a firm. As an agency, do you think they will add to the creativity of your portfolio? Will they refer business to you? Do you think they will enjoyable to work with and not condescending jerks? If you’re working primarily with large industrial clients, why are you taking on the florist down the street that doesn’t have two nickels to rub together?

How many clients do you actually NEED?
If you don’t know, that’s a problem. You haven’t defined what type of client you need to be happy and how many of them if they’re paying your true worth. If you say “I can never have enough,” that’s a way of saying, in other words, that you have no idea. And more importantly, you’re positioning yourself to sound like you’ll take anything that breathes. That’s where big issues and ulcers occur.

What’s your walk away point?
It’s not just about a particular price point but how the prospect is making you feel. If you feel like you are sacrificing part of what makes you great and what people value about you just to make a deal work for the other person, you know it. There’s a tingling sensation in your mind or your gut or your heart or some other region. You just…know it. And yet, you are making deals with yourself internally to make the logic work.

And that’s your walk away point.

Get up from the table, extend your hand and thank them for their time.

Those people won’t be helping because they’ll have line after line to push you over the edge and “sweeten” the deal. Beware.

For example, if I hear “I know a lot of people I can introduce you to if you can cut me a break,” I know I’m likely dealing with a pretender or cheapskate.

In my youth, I was wooed by this kind of talk. Ooh. Aah. You know people. Whatever.

They can pay at least a deposit up front, right now or they can’t. Plain and simple. Put up or shut up.

Create your parameters and standards for the kind of deal you just won’t do.
Everybody’s different on these specifically, but I like to think everybody also has a soul. The deals of “what could be” can’t outweigh what’s in front of you right now in terms of attractiveness. Rather, you should feel like, “Wow, this is a very rewarding mutually beneficial relationship as is. And hey, on top of it, we might even receive (bonus here).” You should NOT feel like, “Wow, this deal really sucks for us right now as we have to take a lot less than we typically do. But oh, if it works out, we’ll be neighbors to Richard Branson on his island with all the money we’ll make.”

Yeah…good luck with that latter scenario. Really. I hope it works out. I just wouldn’t expect it to at all.

This is why I don’t make “scratch-my-back-first” deals that involve me working for pennies for people who use the phrase “skin in the game” or “sweat equity.”
I don’t deal with people who try and barter rather than use dollars – the math doesn’t work cleanly.
I don’t deal with people who try to make back-end-percentages sound alluring when they mean zero dollars now. That’s playing in Fantasyland.

These are all nice ways of saying they have no money or not nearly enough.

It’s not just a financial standpoint. It’s a moral and ethical one for me. It’s who I am and what I believe in. It reflects the people I’ve had good experiences with and the not-so-good experiences.

Similarly, what have your experiences taught you about the situations you’ll never, ever re-enter?

You have to use your own BS Detector for these red flags to have some respect for yourself. The more you choose to engage round after round, the more you choose to be beaten up beyond what you deserve. REMEMBER: It’s your choice to negotiate and haggle. There are two parties that are necessary for that to occur in the first place.

When you decide the point of where enough is enough, you are taking back control of the process.

This is a part of what your brand stands for vs. those who will take anyone that moves and subsequently charge less than you to make that happen. They have no brand. They are just faceless, ordinary vendors providing a service like anyone else at that point, merely blending in with the rest. They will argue that they’ll get the business, but when it’s that ridiculous of a discount, they’ll have to work that much harder for that much less profit, over and over again until it’s a debilitating cycle. Does that sound like winning to you?

If that’s not what you want to be, it’s time to know when you talk the talk and when you have to walk the walk. For your brand. For your financial success. For your balance.

Keep this in mind and live by it with confidence. I’ll consider you a winner before negotiation even starts.

The post Finding Your Negotiating Point Of No Return – And Your Soul. appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

Keeping Your Brand Warmer In A Polar Vortex

Mon, 27 Jan 2014 15:37:00 GMT

As temperatures in this part of the country reach epically historic lows and videos depicting Chicago as the ice planet Hoth from Star Wars go up, one of the more common things for a company to do is to keep their customers informed on social media of delivery status or whether or not they’re open for business on a day like today.

Hey, no problem with that. That’s just keeping people in the loop, which is the right thing to do. But I wonder if there’s an opportunity to go further that some could take advantage of to host a captive Q&A session via Google Hangouts or reminding them of some of your more “live” customer service mechanisms in place such as video chat or a dedicated handle for customer service on Twitter. It may be an opportunity to speak to how your team works remotely and seamlessly , even when sudden conditions force you to not be in the same place. Are there tools you use to protect your communication lines internally and ensure data sharing that may, in turn, be of use for your customers to know (me – I’m a Hangouts and Dropbox fan)? In the process, you’re sending a subtle message about your flexibility, culture, technological level, teamwork and – most importantly – being helpful. Not just the fact that you’re open or closed. This doesn’t have to be complicated or require a ton of internal coordination – some updates or images via social media may do the trick.

After all, you’re talking about a portion of your population locally that may be working today but may be more confined to their own home base rather than the office. As they’re hunkering down with their laptop and Internet connection to the outside world because nobody should dare set foot outside otherwise, they may be yearning to connect with some humans a tad more than usual so cabin fever doesn’t set in. It just might be the extra chance for your brand to shine brighter when the forecast calls for a high of -1 degrees.

How are you connecting or collaborating with your team and customers when conditions force you to physically disconnect? Chances are, we can all benefit from ideas to keep our culture and customer service warm.

The post Keeping Your Brand Warmer In A Polar Vortex appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

Fragile Marketing: Recognize The Symptoms

Thu, 09 Jan 2014 15:23:00 GMT

Donnie Bryant of Donnie Bryant Direct Response Marketing

Today’s guest post is from Donnie Bryant of Donnie Bryant Direct Response Marketing. I’ve had many online conversations with Donnie and I always love interacting with him on multiple channels. In his view, marketing and copywriting isn’t a job but a calling. In addition to be quite talented, he’s just one of the most generous guys in the online universe I know and you can never have too many friends out there like him. – Dan

It’s possible to know everything about marketing techniques, strategies and tools and still be a marketing imbecile.

If you don’t understand what makes people tick, you don’t have much going for you. Marketing is about people, not methods. When business people miss this fact, the marketing they produce is usually pretty fragile. Always in danger of falling apart. Susceptible to defeat in the face of opposition or competition.

Fragile marketing is all around us. Here are 4 major symptoms — do your communications suffer from any of them?

1) Price-based messages are fragile
Unless you have no mailbox, TV or internet, you’ve probably seen dozens of advertisements for Black Friday “doorbuster” sales. Doorbusters take urgency to the extreme, offering uber-low prices to drive traffic to stores ( or to a lesser extent, websites ).

Don’t get me wrong; everyone loves a good deal. But consider the position you put yourself in when you put all your eggs in the low price basket. You have to be cheaper than Walmart. You have to compete with the preponderance of their commercials, too. Is that really the contest you want to participate in?

While this is true all year ’round, consumers ( at least here in America ) are practically programmed to shop at big box retailers for Black Friday and other commercialized holidays. The retailers spend millions of dollars broadcasting their bottom-basement prices to your customers. The deck is stacked against you.

Remedy
No matter what you sell, if you don’t a) offer something unique , b) make a more persuasive appeal , or c) develop a special relationship with your customers, you lose. Work on one or more ( preferably all 3 ) of these.

2) Messages without “rewards” are fragile
As Howard Luck Gossage said, “Nobody reads ads. People read what interests them, and sometimes it’s an ad.” The only reason people will pay attention to your marketing message at all is if you tell them what’s in it for them. Ninety-nine percent of the time, they’re not interested in you or your product/service. They have a very limited amount of time in their day; why should they give any of it to you? You won’t earn their attention by talking about yourself or the features of the thing you sell.

Remedy
Make your customer the center of each of your marketing pieces . Most businesses get this wrong, focusing on whatever they love about their product or their company. Or they think making an interesting, funny ad will do the trick. But if the message never makes a connection between the product and the customer’s felt need, that message is fragile.

3) When you see potential customers as breathing bundles of raw biological desires, you’re messages end up being fragile
Yes, people buy for emotional reasons. ( Just ask anyone who is looking to buy a house. )

Yes, they have desires that should be appealed to.

But don’t ever forget that your customers are human beings ( we call it “ubuntu” ). We all have values, morals and a sense of nobility. There’s a longing for connectedness and purpose in our hearts.

We love. We hope. We want our lives to matter.

Ignoring these realities can put you in a fragile position over the long term. A competitor who does more than scratch a prospect’s current itch, who presents something bigger than the satisfaction of an immediate physical need has the long-term advantage.

Remedy
Build a sense of community. Become associated with some cause your customers care about, or start your own. Share your “why” and your passion; they can be contagious and they create a bond with others who feel the same way.

4) If it isn’t obvious how to take action on your offer, there’s unnecessary fragility in your message

Remedy
Make it easy to buy. Don’t assume people will know what to do. Tell them to go to your website, call your phone number or whatever they have to do to take the next step. Don’t make them guess or hope they’ll figure it out.

Your Action Steps

1) Study the remedies to any of the symptoms you recognize in your own marketing.

2) Get some help if you’re not sure how to apply the remedies to your messages.

3) Whatever you do, don’t ignore these symptoms if you see them. Of course you have a million and one things going on, especially during the holiday season. All the more reason you should make sure you’re marketing is strong. Fragile marketing makes one more thing to worry about: weak sales!

To get in touch with Donnie Bryant, email db@donnie-bryant.com or call 312.450.9291.

The post Fragile Marketing: Recognize The Symptoms appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

Tweak, Evolution or Overhaul?: Knowing When (And How Much) To Change Your Logo

Mon, 09 Sep 2013 13:54:00 GMT

Yahoo is an excellent case study of what not to do when you’re changing your logo.

In my humble opinion, what the company has done in its grand “unveiling” of its new logo after a good deal of fanfare is deliver essentially the same thing. It’s OK to slightly tweak your logo. It’s not OK when you have significant buildup for the first major logo change in 18 years, ask the online community for their opinion on a variety of logos and then go in a direction that doesn’t even include any of those options.

“This represents a significant evolution of the logo. (The purple) is far richer, deeper.”

– Yahoo CMO Kathy Savitt

So you used essentially the same color but a different shade. Come on, Kathy. Not exactly a bold change. Don’t serve me a hamburger and call it a Filet Mignon.

Oh, the font is different. After 18 years, you changed the font . Wow. Question – could you have done less with your logo and still call it an evolution? I don’t think so.

This stuff irritates me on a deeper level because it’s about more than just a new logo. It’s insulting an audience’s intelligence. This isn’t new. It’s a little tweak. My issue with that is that all the signs were there for something fresh to arrive – and they SHOULD have done something that was a departure from the old logo. They called their buildup “30 Days of Change.” In the last year, the company nabbed a high-profile CEO in Marissa Mayer. She seems to have big plans for taking Yahoo in a new direction. And I’m actually rooting for her and the company to implement those big changes. But this? LAME. It signals more of the same. And Yahoo can’t afford to bring more of the same for the sake of its long-term relevance.

I just know that some people are going to say that all of this conversation about Yahoo being perpetuated here and elsewhere is only good publicity for the brand. Nice try. If I’m reading a lot of comments about this logo that range between apathy and great disappointment, that’s not the kind of writing you want.

OK. Enough on them. Let’s talk about what this means for you when you’re considering whether you should undergo a logo tweak, logo evolution or complete logo overhaul.

Logo changes are huge. Whether they’re very minor tweaks or major overhauls, they shouldn’t be taken lightly. It may only call for an update at times. But sometimes, the stars align for your brand to go in a far more evolved direction. That may include:

You don’t need all of the above to make big changes but on the other hand, I’ve sat across from CEOs who have debated if they needed to change their entire company name due to these events, not just their logo. So we can’t minimize the importance of how the extent of a logo change is interpreted – and by who, such as your prospects, customers, employees and investors.

On the other hand, if you want to communicate you’re getting better all the time – but that you have the same strong management team/processes/products or services/vision – perhaps such a dramatic change isn’t warranted. Instead, it may call for a taking a new look at related fonts or other potential drops of color that are in same family as the existing color scheme. In other words, steps are needed to show an updated look for today’s day and age but it’s more about baby steps rather than huge leaps. It gets noticed but probably won’t ruffle too many feathers.

My point is this: It’s never just about your logo. If you think it’s just about fonts and color schemes, think again and go deeper. It’s about the grander vision that’s interpreted from within your walls and by those outside of those walls. If I’m looking at your logo and thinking only a little bit has evolved when in reality you’re trying to communicate that it’s a whole new era, there may be seeds placed for a disconnect to occur – i.e. Yahoo.

In the end, no matter what, a new logo can’t make up for a poor product/service or lousy management decisions or a culture that drives talented people out of the building. I think sometimes this gets forgotten by people who fool themselves into thinking logos can overcome all. That’s not a new logo. That’s called putting lipstick on a pig.

But if those other pieces are in place, remember the “big picture” message you’re conveying in association with the degree of change to the logo. And I’m not just talking about whether or not you change the tagline under that logo either.

The post Tweak, Evolution or Overhaul?: Knowing When (And How Much) To Change Your Logo appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

3 Big Tips For Relaunching Your Website

Tue, 30 Jul 2013 15:38:00 GMT

In the second part of my writing about working on your own agency brand, I’m really excited to share the news that Caliber’s new website is launched!! Go check it out when you get a chance and let me know what you think.

OK. Now let’s talk about you. How do you get your own agency’s site up and live in a timely fashion when you’ve got so much other client work to do?

Start with two things:
1) I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: You have to see your own agency as a client.

2) Get a solid strategic partner to help you divide and conquer, especially on the things you don’t do best, have time for or internal resources to spare.

Granted, I’m coming from this in refreshing an existing site with a new look rather than launching a site for the first time. That said, that can be even more of a reason why you might be putting off your own work. “Eh, it’s the next version of our site. We’ve got something up there at least. Nothing to worry about.” Wrong.

Even if you have a web designer and programmer in-house, it’s very challenging if not impossible to ask that person (or team) to focus on the website exclusively. So they have to balance it with other client work and…here we go again, the other clients get the priority. Over and over and over again.

So what’s the harm in working with contracted talent you trust? Whether you want your in-house designer to work on the agency brand project or you want them to work on other client work, you don’t have to put it all on one plate for the sake of keeping it in-house.

Your Data Can Help Too.
People have all kinds of words and phrases they use to find you via search engines. WordPress is great for not only telling you these terms but helping you understand which pages and posts are the most viewed on your site – and that can play an important role in navigation. For example, when I viewed some of the top viewed pages of my previous site, I found it ranked in this order:

1) Portfolio

2) Contact

3) What Makes Us Different

4) About Us

5) No BS Pricing

6) Content Marketing Services

What’s interesting about that? Well, for one thing, half of these were secondary links underneath the top main menu. What if I moved a couple of them up into the main navigation, like Portfolio and No BS Pricing, to make it that much easier on the audience? So I did that in the new rendition of the site. The other point is that while I had had product-style pages, most people followed a logical order of wanting to see these “about us”-type of agency pages first before they dove into the actual offerings – even though those offerings were seen high enough on the home page.

The takeaway is that sometimes through the stats your audience is going to speak loud and clear about what they want to see and share first on the site. Give the people what they want. Make it easier on them to find. Don’t bury it (I can’t tell you how many companies make the mistake of assuming all their stuff is so easy to find on their site. “What? It’s on the home page!” Yeah. But if it’s sharing space with 20 other links, you do the math on the likelihood of visitors going there).

Let’s get back to the data. When I then took a look at the search terms, a couple popped up that were intriguing, which I might not have thought about:

“Brand Catapult”
“Dan Gershenson Caliber Pricing Range”
“Recommendations For Rebranding”

Brand Catapult is our main product for brand strategy. So while it wasn’t the top page viewed, it was one of the top searched for that leads people to our site. Then I noticed that rebranding was ranked high too. These actually go hand in hand, because as I thought back to why people often need a Brand Catapult conducted, most of the time it’s for a rebranding effort. So the language within that page is and will continue to be tweaked to reflect that.

The other interesting term? The one about having a pricing range.

Now, there’s a fierce debate among people about whether or not to list your pricing on your website. My opinion is this: It’s a conversation you’re going to have at some point anyway if things progress the way you’d like. And clearly here, the audience is telling me it’s something they want more information on, which justifies creating a page for it.

Here’s the other thing about that term you’ll notice though – it’s a pricing range they’re asking about.

That works well for me, since a lot of what I do is custom, so the prices will vary. But I can still give a decent range in the verbiage I write for a pricing page, which should guide people into one of three options for their budget. Again, it’s giving the people what they want – a little more clarity in advance. If they’re kicking tires on price and they can’t afford it, fine. If they can afford it, that makes our first conversations all the more efficient.

So to recap, 1) Think of yourself as a client. When you get into that mindset, think about how you can divide in-house talent with 2) a strategic partner to help share the load . And as you plan around where you want the audience to go, don’t forget to 3) “listen” to what they want through what the data has already told you during their visits. You don’t have to blindly design everything according to what they want – if you want to steer them through a process they’re not familiar with, gently guide them in that direction in your design – but like so many things when I’m creating a brand strategy, you have to get outside your own walls to know how your audience views you and what they value most. That might help you get on the same page. Literally.

Now don’t put your own agency brand to the side a moment longer. If that involves content or strategic thinking on where to take it, let me know if I can be of help to keep things moving along for you – dan@chicagobrander.com.

The post 3 Big Tips For Relaunching Your Website appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

Conversations with Your 22-Year-Old Self

Tue, 04 Jun 2013 19:09:00 GMT

I was taking a look at my very first Advertising portfolio the other day.

Have you done that recently?

It’s a fun and a bit humbling trip down Memory Lane. You should try it.

There they were, a collection of ads that were decently written but from an art direction standpoint…a total mess, really. I chuckled to myself as I saw the ads pasted on black construction paper. They were still good. I was proud of them. But it’s a good thing I was going for a Copywriter position and not anything in design.

The point is, my 22-year-old self wasn’t polished. I seriously doubt yours was either. But for all the ways we were rough around the edges, somebody took a liking to us and gave us a chance. I had a couple people like that. God bless them. I wasn’t even remotely picky about which agency I wanted to get into either. I just happened to be hired at a place with remarkable mentors. At the time when I was first hired, however, I was just happy to be doing work that had something to do with what I went to school for.

We sometimes lose sight of that when we reach the Creative Director/management level. We forget where we came from and instead of relating to the way we were, we expect a kid of today to be just like us in our current form.

That’s not being fair to them at all. This is where somebody says “life’s not fair”…yada, yada, yada. Try to be. A little more warmth won’t kill you.

Yes, we have to make tough decisions about who gets hired and who doesn’t. But if we’re truly about “the work” and not full of complete garbage, that’s such a huge part of where our evaluation should start and end – the portfolio. That’s where we should be tough. So why is it that we allow ourselves to get distracted by anything else when it matters?

“Oh, I didn’t like the font he used on his resume.”
Then guide him and give him some constructive feedback that might be helpful. Personally, I never thought a person could be accurately represented by one piece of paper unless they drew it in crayon or something absurd. The resume grows increasingly marginal compared to, say, a robust and creatively worded LinkedIn profile.

“He didn’t wear a tie.”
Lots of creatives don’t. Get. Over. It.

“He had earrings and tattoos.”
Go hire someone clean cut with far worse ideas. That sounds like a great plan. My bad, I thought we were in the idea business. Most earrings can be taken off and tattoos can be covered up for presentations. Judging a book by its cover is some pretty short-sighted stuff, particularly when you’re talking about creative people.

“He went to school at some university I wasn’t familiar with.”
Oh. Are we being school snobs now? Because obviously great ideas can only come out of one college or university or Ad School, right?

“His GPA was decent but not spectacular.”
Who the hell cares? Seriously? When does this ever come into play during one day of your entire professional life in Advertising? NEVER. “Oh man, if I had only been more of a 3.6 GPA kind of guy rather than a 3.2 GPA kind of guy I surely would’ve solved that problem.” Good grief. Did they graduate? Good. Move on.

“He didn’t speak that confidently.”
I absolutely stunk as a speaker of any kind for the first 8 years of my career. I took classes. I got better. I was given opportunities to present. I got better. When teams draft a rookie player, they don’t expect them to be All-Stars right away (it’s only a nice surprise once in a blue moon). Your draft pick might require similar nurturing.

“I asked her why I should hire her over so many other candidates.”
If you know anything about how to evaluate a person’s talent, you know the answer to this question already. Heck, they may ask you why they should join your agency!

Our 22-year-old selves were so far from perfect. In fact, we still are. So let’s not try to make candidates feel that they should kiss our ring and build statues in our honor just because we’ve been in the business a while and done good things with our talent. Let’s be the human beings that we are and, regardless of whether we hire them or not, see how we can utilize our knowledge to mentor college grads rather than beat them down for their imperfections.

We work in a business that, for all its insanity, can be amazingly exhilarating and fun. Not many of us get to work in a field where we can say that. If you love it as I do, you want to pull up people, not teach them a thing or two on the way life is. We can be more welcoming than judgmental to the incoming generation. If not for our own reputation than for our agency’s.

The portfolio is what really matters.
Don’t lose sight of that. The more you can help them improve it, the more you’ll be paying it forward instead of smacking them down. This doesn’t mean to take it easy on them – it’s OK to be challenging if it’s for the purpose of helping them improve. I do that when I come across a kid who thinks social media is all about writing within 140 characters, getting lots of followers, hashtagging and getting people to do Instagram because, well, it’s cool, bro. If ever there was someone who needs a Yoda so they don’t hurt themselves, it’s this kind of person.

We’re entering that time of year where a grad is going to ask for your time to give them a word of advice in person, by phone or by email. If you don’t have a job or internship for them, you probably have 10 minutes. Really. We all have 10 minutes. The cigarette break / Frappuccino run / conversation about Game of Thrones or Mad Men / FunnyOrDie video watching will just have to be temporarily replaced with something useful that might make more difference in a young person’s life than you can possibly realize.

Your 22-year-old self would probably agree.

The post Conversations with Your 22-Year-Old Self appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

You May Be Your Best New Business Salesperson.

Sun, 19 May 2013 16:44:00 GMT

So let’s say you have a relatively new business that’s no more than 1-2 years old. Things are progressing nicely and you’re making a decent amount of money. Maybe you aren’t quite yet jumping into a pool of it like Scrooge McDuck, but you’re doing OK for yourself.

Still, the challenge of filling the pipeline becomes a regular thing in your mind. The conversation with your team becomes, “Maybe we should hire a New Business Salesperson.”

Hey, that sounds intriguing. Someone who can get out there and sell for you, huh? You can focus on the work you’re doing and another person can head out there to make it rain.

It’s a great idea in theory. And it’s not to say it’s impossible. But here’s the two choices you’re most often faced with:

Ronnie Rainmaker
What’s that? Yeah sure, you bet I can bring in the big bucks. I worked in tons of industries and had a lot of success. Maybe not this one exactly, but I know what I’m doing. I don’t think I have to know a ton about your business. I get it. You’re what, an ad guy, a social media guy who does a lot of this, uh, Facebook updating for people, right? Sure, fine, whatever. You just do your thing and I’ll do mine. Since I’m so awesome, you need to pony up the big bucks for me but you’ll be glad you did.

Two problems with Ronnie:

1) The extraordinary amount of money he costs until he proves he can deliver the goods

2) He could find you a bunch of clients and think he’s doing incredible when in reality, the ones he’s finding are not the greatest fits for who you want to reach.

In his defense on the second point, that’s your fault, not his. You have to define precisely who you want to attract, who you don’t and how you’re going to reward him for more of the cream of the crop. This is as much a branding exercise as it is a sales issue. If you don’t know how to position yourself in terms of who you definitively want to work with – and it’s not that “everybody who needs my services” bullcrap – you will be leading Ronnie on a wild goose chase and financing every mile for him.

Commission Carl
You don’t have to pay me much of a draw or even any draw. All you have to do is pay me a handsome commission for what I bring in. Isn’t that a great deal? Nothing out of pocket for you other than what I bring in! What’s that you say? Experience? Well, I sold flat screen TV’s at Best Buy so I’m really good at moving product and connecting with people. That’s what it’s all about and I’ve been doing it for decades. So what do you say?

At first glance, it sounds attractive for an entrepreneur. Not much risk there, right? Nothing lost, nothing gained. Except for one thing – again, if you want to improve Carl’s chances of success, you have to guide him on what your brand is all about. He has to understand the brand forwards and backwards for every prospect challenge. He has to understand your audience and what methods play well with them. If you’re in the business of Internet marketing, you probably don’t need him to knock on doors at his country club. This is so much easier said than done, it’s not even funny.

There’s just got to be someone who really gets you, gets your brand, gets who you want to speak with more often and knows precisely where you want to go.

I’ve got just the person. Grab a mirror and look at it.

What we often don’t realize about New Business is that we don’t give ourselves enough credit or see the potential we already have within ourselves. You see, there’s nothing more authentic or rewarding than knowing that you are delivering your message in a way that feels right and to the right person. This isn’t egotistical to say. If you truly have a command of your own message, who could be more powerful of an advocate than you are?

“But I don’t have enough time to do New Business. I’ve got other things that need to get done.”

Sure, I understand that. But do you think you can just give most salespeople a little instruction in a “set it and forget it” kind of way? I don’t buy that. They require guidance, collaborative planning and accountability measurement from you on a regular basis so that as a team, everyone can be on the same page consistently. That takes an investment of time too.

The middle ground can often come from better coaching and training.

This is where the rubber often meets the road. I’m certainly not immune to this challenge, which is why working with a sales coach like Steve Fretzin of Sales Results, Inc. can help ensure you’re disciplined in your activities and meeting with the right people rather than just tire kickers.

Are you with me so far? Think you have it in you to change at least a habit or two? What about as many as seven bad habits?

I think you can be committed enough to spend just two hours and a hair over $20 to find out.

If you’re in that camp, read on and join us on Wednesday, June 12th from 8am – 10am at 180 N. LaSalle as Steve and I present:

SELLING IS FOR LOSERS:
Seven Reasons to Change Bad Habits

Forget all the outdated “sales-ish” methodologies. Forget sounding like a used car huckster. Selling can be easier and even, yes, fun. Here are a few of the negative questions, assumptions and frustrations we will be solving in our interactive workshop:

· Why the traditional model of sales has failed
· Why social media “doesn’t work fast enough”
· Why you may be measuring social media success improperly
· Why your prospects are only buying on price
· Why you’re perceived the same as everyone else in your field

It’s a limited seating event, so if you’re committed to finding out just what kind of sales you can obtain on your own before blowing a large amount on Ronnie Rainmaker or hoping for the best with Commission Carl, this is the event you don’t want to miss. Mark your calendar for the morning of Wednesday, June 12th from 8am-10am at 180 N. LaSalle, Suite 3700.

Follow this link to register:
https://www.eventbrite.com/event/6528124797

The post You May Be Your Best New Business Salesperson. appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

Two Things College Profs Should Teach Ad Students (But Often Don’t)

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 15:56:00 GMT

The student across the table from me at the Portfolio Review had one of those deer-in-the-headlights looks my way when I asked the question. It was a question that I thought was simple enough, but apparently it was a real brain teaser. I wondered if I was dealing with a kid who had just had too much to drink the night before at a frat party and was regretting it now. But she seemed fairly lucid, so I asked again:

“What was your thinking behind this campaign?”

She stammered out, “ Well, I, uh, guess I just thought this logo effect would be cool and the colors looked pretty good.”

I asked it again to another student and got, “I did this because that was our assignment, to do a logo and an ad and a website…”

I kept hearing this and started to notice a disturbing pattern: More and more kids coming out of college into the Advertising profession don’t know diddly squat about how to sell their work in any convincing manner.

Oh, they have talent for sure. They can write well. They can design well. They know how to service an account at a junior level. But the ingredient they’re missing is one they should have been equipped with as early on in their schooling as possible – strategic thinking.

Colleges and Journalism Professors, listen up.

We in the professional working world expect you to teach them this stuff. Frankly, for the truckloads of money their parents are shelling out to your school or the amount of debt they’re going to accumulate due to student loans, they deserve to be in the best possible position to succeed. Not settle for another line of work.

So yes, you’ll excuse me if I hold your institution under a microscope to ensure it continues to prepare kids for the landscape in front of them.

Which brings us to the other thing I find lacking more often than not: presentation ability.

How much good do you think it does to teach them the merits of great Copywriting and Graphic Design and Web Development if they don’t know how to persuade a Creative Director or Account Director or client of the work’s reason for being?

I’m not asking them to be superstars in this skills area right after graduation. That’s unrealistic. But I don’t think it’s unreasonable to want them to be able to present their work thoughtfully and with confidence.

It’s not that they can’t get into the profession on talent. It’s a question of how far they can go. I don’t know too many people who advance that high up in a company in this field and also suck at selling.

Some choose to want to only go so far because they don’t want to get too far removed from what they love most, such as writing or design. I can totally respect that. But what I can’t respect is not being equipped to have the option of that choice because they weren’t given the presentational skills early on.

Wait, wait. Don’t tell me. Here comes the excuse for talent rising above all shortcomings:

“Great work sells itself.”

Let me know when you’re done sliding on that rainbow and read on when you are.

Because while great work should sell itself, it often doesn’t. There is an entire minefield of internal and external challenges to that brilliant work seeing the light of day and resembling what it began as.

It needs savvy, sophisticated people to link the mindset of the audience with what that work is striving to address. And while it may still get shot down or suffer what the great Luke Sullivan calls the “death by a thousand cuts,” you give it a fighting chance of emerging through the storm of critiques with a strong rationale.

I was lucky. I went to a Journalism School, Drake University, where I was given the ability to partake in campaign simulations that gave me not only a real taste for agency roles but also presenting work to a real company. I couldn’t get up there and justify buying off on a campaign because it was “cool.” I couldn’t just get by on creative writing alone.

I had to dive deep into the company’s challenge, learn about what hadn’t worked up to this point, what their competitors were doing better or worse than them, try to unearth a few nuggets of insight and use that insight to help them live up to a promise their audience could believe in. And of course, I had to sound really good in expressing that thinking.

It didn’t matter whether or not they were actually going to use that winning work. It was the presentation that mattered. And when our team experienced technical difficulties during the presentation and lost to another agency by 1 point, I learned a lot about improvising on the fly, walking a client through the thought process and, in the end, how much I hated to lose. Crazy valuable stuff to learn before I donned a cap and gown.

I was lucky a second time when my first Creative Director taught me about how to write better Creative Rationales. It didn’t need to be a 10-page report but 2-3 paragraphs that the client could use while hopefully bulletproofing the work. If we were taking the client in a new creative direction, why were we choosing to take them down that path?

And I was lucky a third time when my second Creative Director told me I needed to try a couple of classes in comedy improvisation. Trust me. This stuff scares the crap out of you if you were like me with no training but it’s a good thing for the long haul.

But…for the investment required, I think colleges and universities can help students accomplish a whole lot of the above before they get into the working world. They won’t all be lucky to fall into the right environment upon graduation and have great mentors when they get there like I did. Therefore, they deserve to be involved in more simulated or real campaigns. They need to learn how important strategic thinking is in the equation. And they should know what it’s like to present their work with passion.

Without these ingredients, we’re only going to have more graduates coming out of school who know everything about how to post and tweet and create hashtags and Instagram but don’t know why they’re doing it in the grand scheme of things as it pertains to the brand. They’ll be tactically intelligent but strategically empty.

On more than one occasion, I have been told by interns on how they had learned more with me in 12 weeks than they had in years at school. I’m proud of that and disturbed at the same time.

Yes, I still believe a college education is worth the investment. But please don’t tell me we can’t do better.

The post Two Things College Profs Should Teach Ad Students (But Often Don’t) appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

The Day Of Sales-Free Selling Has Arrived.

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 18:43:00 GMT

If you want to look old as a marketer, use tired old marketing tactics that, technically, might “work” but fail over 90% of the time.

Traditional direct mail , for example, offers a typical 2% response rate. So going in, you know that there’s an excellent chance that almost every little postcard you send out in carpet-bombing, non-personalized fashion is going to be filed in a cylinder under a desk or be used as birdcage lining. This is not the same as direct mail that utilizes Personalized URLs (PURLs) – those can be great – but instead a piece of paper that provides no further attempt to get to know the prospect or ever takes the prospect down a more personalized funnel.

Cold calling is another example. Traditional salespeople say it works, but they can’t deny that the percentages are not in their favor here either. You dial 10 people who are only marginally qualified at best and you’re going to have 9 out of 10 of those people say, “Not interested,” if not be outright pissed that you’re interrupting their day (and the one who actually talks to you may be a lead but not ultimately a sale). Especially when you launch into your script about how your life-changing services are just what they’ve been waiting for when you’ve made no attempt to truly understand their needs. Oh wait. That would take more intensive research on that prospect and who has time for that. My bad.

2% effectiveness.

Come on.

Can we get real about what “works” when we’re talking sales and marketing?

Maybe we can agree on this much, regardless of this or that tactic – sending out a blanket message to thousands of people you have never interacted with before may not be as good for conversion as you getting to know them, understanding their challenges and providing a path that helps them through a decision.

No, this isn’t a launch into how inbound marketing is King and everything else is dead (although inbound is extremely vital). There’s still a place in this world for “Push” strategies and advertising and selling. But the way we push can, is and will be more 1-to-1 than ever. More customized. More selective, pre-qualified and integrated with digital to improve our close ratios. More scalable so that more people can receive a personalized approach. What is continually evolving in our world is the need for greater business intelligence faster as we prospect. And as better technological tools catch up with that ambition to help identify our targets more specifically in advance, we may not have as much of a need to dial for dollars by the thousands of people.

But beyond the technology, how do you change that mindset so that you actually slow down sales and clarify yourself as a viable option in the prospect’s mind?

I do have a suggestion on that, which hopefully is as helpful to you as it has been to me.

One company that has had a profound impact in the way I’ve thought about selling myself and my services is Sales Results, Inc . To be honest, when I approached this company years ago, I was great at helping my clients build their brand but I had trouble with how I developed my own approach. I didn’t have a good “elevator speech.” I didn’t know how to set an agenda for my meetings – most were just throwaway “I’ll keep an eye out for you” coffees and lunches. And I didn’t hold myself accountable for my activities or should I say, lack of them.

Jim Sheehan and Steve Fretzin changed all that for me. I find myself continually learning that there are smarter ways to, in fairly efficient order, discover if there’s a natural fit between two parties as either a sale or a strategic partnership. And how liberating it can be to help someone clarify a decision – even if that decision doesn’t arrive at your business’ doorstep.

There are no shortcuts in sales (none I’ve found yet anyway). You still have to network. You still have to do one-on-ones and events. You still have to follow up after appointments. You still have to make referrals, not just take them.

But for some odd reason, when I employ the Sales Results methodology, it just doesn’t feel like hardcore, off-putting sales to me. And I consider that a very good thing. It’s more natural, comfortable and in my view, more effective.

There are two ways to get a sense of what I mean. One is to actually go through the Sales Results program. The other is to pick up Steve’s new book just released today called “ Sales-Free Selling: The Death of Sales and the Rise of a New Methodology .”

To be on the safe side, I’d do both.

The post The Day Of Sales-Free Selling Has Arrived. appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

The Challenge of Writing One Original Sentence.

Tue, 05 Mar 2013 00:01:00 GMT

I was having an interesting discussion recently on LinkedIn about whether or not you accept people who invite you to connect with no personal message other than “I would like to add you to my network on LinkedIn.”

Apparently in the eyes of some, ignoring this message is egotistical. That we’re passing up potential opportunities for business. That we’re navel-gazing and only care about ourselves.

How dare we get so high and mighty to ignore the invitation from a faceless person who has no ability to write one original sentence other than the template given.

You’ve got to be kidding me.

Are we being social or are we social networking? There’s a difference. Because if we’re striving to create satisfying, mutually beneficial relationships, the initiating party should show they give a damn beyond collecting one more name. This is kind of like the person who comes up to me at a networking event, talks 100% about what they do, gives me a business card and then leaves (I swear this has happened to me more than once and it’s probably happened to you).

Here’s the next argument: “You need to be clear about who you want to deal with in your intro.” Ah, but I do. And yet, I still get these blanket intros. Which is expected when you have millions of people on a social network, I suppose. But this is about taking back ownership and control of your circle of who you want to deal with and who you don’t. And somehow, saying “No” to a person who makes absolutely no effort to show they value your acceptance of the introduction one way or another is…being snobby? Really?

“I saw your website.”

“I read your book.”

“I read your profile.”

“I’m a friend of ____.”

“We share a Group.”

“I’m a Chicago Bears fan like you.”

ANYTHING. This is…hard? This is considered expecting too much of people?

Well, put me in the camp of greater expectations of my fellow man and woman. On LinkedIn and elsewhere.

I’d say the people who accept everyone and anyone need to re-evaluate themselves and their relationships more. It’s not being snobby. It’s part of being a professional. It’s part of striving to achieve strategic partnerships instead of being Connection Collectors.

Deeper business relationships aren’t born from a template.

The post The Challenge of Writing One Original Sentence. appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

Resolve That Nobody Steals Your Time

Mon, 07 Jan 2013 19:11:00 GMT

It took me a few days later than usual to find my New Year’s Resolution. It’s not to lose a few more pounds (although that’s fine with me) or the other usual stuff.

This year, I’m going to protect my professional time like nobody’s business.

I’m going to make more meetings count.

I’m not going to attend cocktail hours to merely exchange business cards, but to connect.

I’m going to value the increased speed in helping someone clarify a decision, whether that is a yes or a no.

In short, everything I do has to go somewhere beyond that original meeting .

Here’s why I was inspired. I was recently in a conference call where it took the better part of an hour for me to discover that there was not a fit. Actually, scratch that. I knew it was going nowhere within 15 minutes. I was being nice for the rest of the time.

It was my fault, too. I should’ve done what the people at Sales Results, Inc. taught me, namely, to set an agenda and outline the purpose for why we were meeting (and there’s so much more to it than this, which they can teach you).

Your skills are valuable. Your thoughts are valuable. Your opinions are valuable. Those need to be channeled somewhere beyond sharing a Grande Mocha and wishing each other well. It can’t just be the answer to “what do you do?”

You have no time for tire kickers.

You have no time for people trying to get free advice off of you.

You have no time for people who don’t understand your value.

You have no time for people who are simply too paralyzed by fear or layers of bureaucracy to do anything.

Similarly, you have to ask yourself how much work you want to put into educating someone on what you do/what value you bring before they become a true lead.

That is why I have all the time in the world to educate people on how social media may play a role in their business’ success, but I have no time to educate people on the relevance of social media. It’s here. It’s not going anywhere. And if you don’t understand that by now, I doubt anything I say will change your mind to the contrary.

And even if I do convince you, does that mean you’ll want to get started? Ha. No. You’ll be skeptical, thinking this whole social media thing is a passing fad. Let’s not kid each other.

It’s amazing how some people stroll into networking settings and brag about the 20 groups they’re members of. That’s not smart. That’s inefficient and throwing at a dartboard blindfolded. The way I see it, you should work to identify the very core groups you want to be a part of that are right for your brand’s mission.

People who expect you to do a dog-and-pony show at the initial meeting are misguided. It’s not a time for that. It’s a time to learn about one another – and that goes both ways. Go to each other’s website. See each other’s LinkedIn profiles. As much as I hate people who say, “Google me,” you should, well, Google them, their company and other relevant companies in their space.

What all this has to do with branding is that you say a lot by the company you keep and how you approach that company. Make the process of making your strategic partnership team really, really hard.

Make the process of being your client a selective process. Not everybody can get into your club and that’s a good thing. So stop right now by saying a good client/referral for you is “Anybody who….” No. Stop. It’s not anybody. It’s a specific type of person. Drill down and know it so you can recite it by heart. Again, it is your TIME and there’s only so much of it to go around. So why the F*** would you give it away to anyone who wants it?

This spreads to social media as much as anything. Content creation, curation, distribution, research, reporting, etc. is not something you easily slip into your week, especially when you sit down to a meaningful blog post or scripting a video. Unless you want to just pump out a bunch of posts without meaning or understanding for how it fits within the overall brand. I personally don’t prefer that.

The larger picture of this is that having no discipline with who gets your professional time means those you care about in your personal time may suffer . Oh, I’m sorry I couldn’t be home by dinnertime, honey. I was taking a long meeting with a prospect who, as it turned out, wasn’t a prospect. Or I was on the phone for an extended period of time advising someone who has no business running a business but wants me to be their therapist rather than their marketing strategist.

That’s not their fault. It’s yours. For not screening them quicker. For being a pushover with someone who wants to pick your brain free of charge. For not steering them online to check out your business or sending them material in advance of a conversation. For cheating yourself out of the time it takes to create something people can value and share and talk about. You said Yes to people who didn’t deserve it and now you have to tell someone or something you love No.

That’s the bigger complication of liberally giving out your time without any rhyme or reason. And seeing it as more precious is exactly what the most important professional and personal people in your life deserve.

The post Resolve That Nobody Steals Your Time appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

Traditional Media’s New Role In A Digital World

Wed, 26 Dec 2012 18:37:00 GMT

You can look at the last cover of a news magazine like Newsweek and wax nostalgic about the good old days if you like. I prefer to think of the positive of what a final cover represents in choosing to use but only a simple hashtag of #lastprintissue .

Newsweek’s last issue in print

It’s not a period of finality on a brand. It’s an acknowledgement that the brand will be conversed about in other ways. Digital ways. And that it can continue to have relevance – maybe even more than it has recently. It will be read on a laptop, on a tablet, on a smartphone. It will be shared faster rather than lie exclusively on the coffee table of a physician’s office.

Yes, of course we can see this giant shift to digital all around us – we’ve seen it for years.

And yet, some operate as if digital isn’t the new norm of communicating across most demographics. As if every fourth person on this planet isn’t using a social media network. Is it any wonder why those are the same people who go kicking and screaming into obscurity?

But you won’t count me as one of those who say the ways we’ve known are dead. Instead, I see them as shifting into a new skin that may feel funny and different at first, but is necessary for the long haul.

To survive, traditional media should embrace its new role as not necessarily the end-all, be-all of the conversation with the buyer but instead the media that drives the buyer online to learn more, build a long-term relationship and encourage greater sharing across the web.

TV can do this. Print can do this. Radio can do this. Direct can do this. And in certain instances, they have. Beautifully.

It’s too bad that it just isn’t sold this way enough by certain reps of this form of media. They choose to sell their channel as an alternative to digital media instead of selling the concept of how the entire lifecycle can potentially begin with them and integrate into the digital world. Many choose to ignore the reality that their customer has to diversify their marketing mix and that, yes, that should likely include digital. Those that do operate as if we live in a print or digital world of absolutes when we don’t. We watch TV and use iPads. We read magazines and use smartphones.

Our lives are integrated. Brands must be too.

Imagine if someone could show you not just the typical demographics of their publication/station but actually showed an ability to drive traffic to a website. Then you’ve got something. If that commercial drives people to explore your Facebook page in greater detail where you are running a contest, then you’ve got something.

Drive them to a Facebook page. Add a hashtag. Continue the story that was begun in a traditional media setting on a YouTube channel. Could the conversation that begins in print then advertise an upcoming chat on Twitter at a select day and time?

Yes, I realize some of the responsibility here lies not only with who sells the media but also who creates it.

Guilty as charged. I’ve created ads in the past that pretty much had the logo as the call to action.

But it becomes an increasingly expensive proposition when all we ask people to do is notice our logo and little else (I’m getting much better about changing this mindset in myself).

Or when we ask prospects to spend thousands on one ad – if I’m going to do the equivalent of going to Vegas and letting it all ride on one hand, can you give more information on my odds first so I can feel really, really smart about what I’m about to drop on the table?

I once had a client who was in this situation, didn’t have a ton of money in the ad budget and was being solicited for business by a radio station asking him to advertise during a rush hour time slot. After explaining the client’s goals for the brand and the audience we were targeting, I was looking for some extra justification on why we should drop thousands on a small window of time.

“Everybody listens to him. He’s a former Dolphin and we’re in Miami so there you go.”

Um…no. There I don’t go.

She couldn’t explain how that ad would work for my client in any kind of customizable way (when did this become too much to ask?). She could only talk about listenership in broad terms that couldn’t help my client make a decision he’d feel good about. Asking her about online conversions? Ha. I’ve seen deer in headlights with more clarity.

And yet, we know the opportunity for conversion to online after engaging with traditional media first is there for those who craft messages and sell advertising around it accordingly.

Consider the findings of a report by Deloitte earlier this year called “ State of the Media Democracy ” in which 2,276 respondents in the UK between 14-75 years old were surveyed.

64% of respondents visited a website after seeing an advertisement on TV.
61% visited a website after seeing a magazine ad.
59% visited a website after reading a newspaper ad.

Here’s the shocker – guess how many respondents visited a website from a mobile app ad.

A whopping 12%.

Traditional media as online media driver has great power and potential. To declare it universally dead by any stretch of the imagination is just wrong. To pretend it works in exactly the same way in today’s world as it always did is just as wrong.

For all of our conversations about brand integration over the years, we can still integrate online and offline so much more. This is good for all media. Electronic and otherwise.

The post Traditional Media’s New Role In A Digital World appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

Crashing, Healing and Rejuvenating Your Career Like Never Before

Thu, 20 Dec 2012 16:52:00 GMT

Steve Fretzin
President
Sales Results, Inc.

You’ve heard the story before. A young gun 20-something in Sales living the bachelor’s life at a fast pace. He’s making it happen with all the material possessions that point to success – a nice paycheck, condo, a Porsche in the garage and late nights at all the hot spots in town.

Then Steve Fretzin climbed into a small plane and his outlook on life as an entrepreneur changed forever.

“I was taking a little mini-vacation with some friends and flew up to Eagle River, Wisconsin for the day to play around. One of my friends was the pilot. On our return flight, we lost our engine thousands of feet up.”

The plane crashed into a house in Crystal Lake. While feeling lucky to have survived the experience, Fretzin was badly hurt and his recovery over the next several months was anything but pleasant.

“Basically, it was the most excruciating pain I had ever felt in my life,” Fretzin recalls. “I had torn the meniscus in my knee, broken right arm and dislocated my left shoulder and hip from my body. Meanwhile, I was having nightmares about falling out of the sky.”

Upon healing after the long road back, Fretzin had the wake-up call about having a greater perspective on life and “living every day as if it were your last,” that you might expect when one has a life-altering experience. But it wasn’t confined to his personal relationships. He had a wake-up call for his career too.

“Though I seemingly had a lot of nice material things, I was lost in my priorities and overall desire to make the most of each day,” he says. “Once I peeled back the layers of the onion, I realized that I wasn’t really happy in my job. I was going through the motions and needed to get serious about the meaning behind what I did for a living. What could I do every day where I could look myself in the mirror and feel good about my role in this world?”

Today, as the President of Sales Results, Inc. , Fretzin has become one of the top sales trainers in the Chicagoland area and has appeared on several media outlets as an authority on sales, networking and how to create deeper connections in business through developing strategic partnerships.

Hopefully you’ll never have a traumatic experience as Fretzin did in order to find the focus of your life’s work, but here are the top 5 suggestions he makes to entrepreneurs struggling with how to channel their professional purpose:

#1 No matter how smart you are, everyone needs help.

Find someone who knows more than you and has a skill set you don’t have. Bring people into your life who help you. “Thomas Edison didn’t do everything on his own,” Fretzin explains. “He actually surrounded himself with people who had complementary skill sets. Just as the President does with his Cabinet. So ask yourself who you can bring in as a friend, partner and mentor to help you. Top executives have coaches. I continue to do that with my business every day.”

#2 Genuinely help people and build relationships so that when you need help, you can call on them.

You can’t just be a “Taker” – you need to get to know people, help people and stay in contact for the relationship to blossom. You shouldn’t just sit on your rear end and expect strong relationships to happen.

#3 Time is your most precious asset

“My whole day revolves around business development – but it’s not just about sending out e-mails,” Fretzin says. As he sees it, entrepreneurs often have a difficult time shoving off the “busywork” that might be done during off hours, which interferes with what absolutely needs to happen during the day. “You’ve got to get out there doing productive things for your business. Who are your strategic partners? When was the last time you were in touch with them and what referrals have you brought one another lately? What networking events are you attending? Can working on that proposal wait until later tonight so you aren’t eating up precious face time with people today?”

Even here, Fretzin says that people can confuse activity with progress. Which is why he is a big proponent of setting an agenda for each meeting and by the end of that meeting, both parties agreeing to specific and actionable steps to see if there’s a fit from a networking or sales perspective.

#4 Never stop learning.

It is critical to continue your education and never stop learning. Whether it’s learning sales, how to interpret web analytics or social media, it’s imperative to commit yourself to learning new things. People who stop learning and believe they’ve learned all they’re going to learn will get stale. If you do read something you know, it’s will simply reinforce that you are on the right track.

#5 Don’t “sell” people, but rather walk them through a buying decision.

That’s right. A sales coach which is telling you not to sell in order to drive the business forward. In his new book entitled “Sales-Free Selling: The Death of Sales and the Rise of a New Methodology,” Fretzin explains that in today’s competitive marketplace, there’s no reason to carry the traditional sales approach into a meeting.

“People don’t want to be sold. What you really need to do is walk the buyer through a decision. When you stop selling and start listening more, you’re in a much better position to understand a buyers needs and help them make a better business decision.”

In a time where we hustle through life trying to make sense of it all, it is critical to reflect on what you have, what you want and how you are going to make the most of each day. In the words of Mr. Fretzin, “live each day as if it were your last. You’ll be surprised how much you accomplish.”

The post Crashing, Healing and Rejuvenating Your Career Like Never Before appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

Is Your Business Ready To Be A Social Business?

Wed, 12 Dec 2012 15:03:00 GMT

A new IBM study shows social media is being integrated into business processes beyond channels – to learn more about the insights, I had a fascinating conversation with Eric Lesser, Research Director of the IBM Institute of Business Value.

Generally speaking, I don’t have to convince too many entrepreneurs that this social media thing is here to stay. By now, the conversation has largely shifted from “is this viable?” to “what should our presence on social media look like and how does this fit into the overall brand?”

Don’t look now but the conversation about social media’s about to change once again. Not merely about this or that new channel. Not about what Facebook is adding or restricting.

No, I’m talking about something deeper – the growth of social business .

Social business is about integrating the technology of social media into your business practices. It involves social tools to encourage greater team collaboration, productivity, new idea generation, better customer communication, streamlined processes and more.

If this concept a leaves your company feeling a bit behind the times in its progress, don’t panic. A new study can help reveal how organizations like yours can use social approaches to create meaningful business value.

I had the opportunity to speak with Eric Lesser, Research Director of the IBM Institute of Business Value, who recently spearheaded a new study on social business. Through surveys and in-depth interviews of nearly 1200 individuals from leading organizations, Lesser and his team uncovered powerful insights on how companies are facing the prospect of not only adding on social media channels but becoming a true social business.

Dan Gershenson: How does social business change the landscape for business?

Eric Lesser: Throughout IBM’s Institute for Business Value study, we talked to people in industries from telecom to restaurants, from business-to-business to business-to-consumer. What do they have in common? They recognize that if they’re going to truly integrate social media in their businesses, they can’t just port over the tools they use in their personal lives. They have to learn how to use social media in ways specific to their business. Take training for example. What if you were able to use social approaches to create a community of learners that tapped into new content? Rather than instruction books, what about creating an instructional video that people could comment on? What opportunities can social create to allow you to listen better to customers and vendors for great ideas?

DG: How are companies beginning to recognize its importance?

EL: Through our study we found that social business is an area garnering significant attention and investment – almost half of the companies we spoke with in the study increased their investment in 2012. Interestingly, while Marketing and PR are the top two investments of these companies, they’re not the areas with the largest jumps in expected growth. That actually belongs to the areas of Customer Service, Sales, IT and HR.

DG: Why the biggest growth in those areas?

EL: Managing the brand and perception is as crucial as ever. There’s no doubt about that. But there’s also a need to apply social media to how internal work is actually going to get accomplished. Do these companies have all the answers to that yet? No. In fact, we see that more than 2/3 of the companies we talked to are underprepared for cultural changes as a result of social business. They felt their internal cultures were not social business oriented and they aren’t working enough on the applications of social business inside and outside the organization.

They’re not sure about the endgame.

DG: What can they do to prepare better for a shift like this?

EL: The question is not merely about getting more ideas but setting up more opportunities for ideas to come from anywhere .

As companies grow, the knowledge around the organization becomes more distributed, so making connections in the most productive ways becomes increasingly important.

Customers are expecting companies to know much more about them. That means companies can’t just rely on manufacturing and product knowledge. They need to deliver customer-driven content more effectively. Don’t just provide me a manual, but provide me with experts who understand my challenges and can show me how to fix my issues on a customized level. Some companies will struggle with this but customers are expecting this kind of service in their environment. They don’t want to have difficulty spelling out a challenge or they’ll move on.

Four Social Business Trends for 2013
Here are the next big movements Lesser expects companies to make in the coming year as they adapt further to being social businesses.

#1 Innovative Listening Methods More In Demand

On one hand, Lesser found companies were using social business methods to communicate 1-on-1 but also to communicate to crowds. That puts better monitoring tools at a premium while paying attention to sentiment analysis of your organization. “Some of this is going to be reactive, such as customer service through Facebook or Twitter,” he says. “But some of this will be proactive. This involves finding influencers and mavens connecting them to the organization and embracing their networks.”

#2 Customer Communities Continue To Rise

With people having a passion for virtually everything and anything, there’s no shortage of opportunities for community building. But how do companies set up those communities?

“Communities are built by bringing together individuals with a passion for your product or service, and engaging in an ongoing dialogue with them,” Lesser says. “For example, LEGO provides members of its communities the chance to submit an idea for a product and if it’s accepted, they get a cut of the royalties.”

You don’t have to be a large corporation for this idea to take shape – how can you involve your audience in product development or reward them for feedback?

#3 Shift from Brand Management to Greater Sales/Post-Sales Service

I started to panic a little when Lesser mentioned this development – what’s that? No more branding? To my relief, branding isn’t going away anytime soon. But it’s far more than establishing a presence, as Lesser explained.

“What’s going to be big in the next 2-3 years in using leads to drive sales is, how do we make sure the experiences across our social platforms aren’t completely disjointed? How is the overall look and feel seamless? That’s one of the opportunities for a much closer CMO-CIO partnership. There seems to be a recognition of a need to work together more effectively on areas like customer data and mobile. It’s going to be harder for a CMO to be successful without a CIO and vice versa.”

#4 Greater Shared Governance of Social

Less than 1/3 of the companies Lesser and his team spoke with have a shared governance when it comes to this concept of social business. “But the ones that do recognize that it doesn’t just belong to marketing and media relations. You’ve got to have sponsorships from multiple functions within the company, from HR to legal to risk management. They’re not just reacting to potential problems , but looking for opportunities.”

“Social business has far-reaching implications throughout the organization because when you’re asking employees to be ambassadors of your brand, everyone needs to better understand what customers demand.

Social business comes from recognizing that great ideas can come from anywhere in the organization, vendors and customers if you provide enough opportunities for it to happen.”

The post Is Your Business Ready To Be A Social Business? appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

We Are All In The Hospitality Business.

Thu, 06 Dec 2012 23:28:00 GMT

The other day I was watching a show called “ Hotel Impossible ” in which a consultant gives shabby, unprofitable hotels and resorts the makeover treatment from a design and operations standpoint. As you can expect, he didn’t pull any punches on what was wrong with these places, whether the rooms were dirty, the color scheme was boring, the staff was disorganized and more. Many times the hotel owners thought the location would make up for a lot of these miscues (nice try). Worst of all, these shortcomings had translated into an awful time for the guests, who would surely never come back if the hotel remained in that condition.

In reality, if the hotel was merely OK, it’s safe to say the guest wouldn’t come back for that either, right? Surely they wouldn’t tell many others about it.

That’s when it struck that it’s kind of odd that we confine this word “Hospitality” to hotels and restaurants. Don’t we all want to be hospitable, after all?

Treating our brands as hotels
while seeing our customers as guests
wouldn’t be a bad thing.

Think about it. Most hotels get to keep a guest for a few days or maybe just overnight. Obviously, for restaurants, it’s even less – an hour or two. In that very limited timeframe, they have an opportunity to either provide service or provide an experience.

How does that apply to other industries?

If they say you’re “professional,” you’re probably providing a service. Good for you. Welcome to a giant pool of people who get paid for what they do. In other words, big whoop.

If they are amazed by the experience, have been given a memory, recommend you to others, sing your praises, etc., you’re providing something special. We’re talking about great surprises that are above and beyond the expected. This is hard work. It’s not easy to get here. But it’s something to strive for if you hope to have repeat “guests.” By the way, if something goes wrong during their “stay,” you do something incredible that surprises them too. Even the best hotels make mistakes – it’s how they make it really, really right for the guest that shows a higher level of sophistication.

I try to remind myself that clients are guests within my care. I’m pushing myself to ask the questions and give insightful reporting before they even ask for it. Why? I’ve learned that if they ask and ask and ask and ask, there could be something I’m not providing enough of. Take most advertising agencies – many tend to have the mindset that when the client asks for something, you jump on top of it, rally your team, come up with great ideas and hopefully, you wow the client with your brilliance.

But again, what if we had done that before they even asked? I go back to the hotel analogy. If you have to ask the front desk for many things, it gets to be an inconvenience for you. Sure, they’ll probably bring up what you want and you’ll be mildly appreciative. And yet, what if they brought something to your door just because they thought you would enjoy your stay that much better? What if they realized it was a special event based on your history with them, so that before you ever reminded them that “it’s our anniversary,” you got upgraded to a bigger suite? Wouldn’t you stand a greater chance of telling someone else about it online at a review site?

What’s the point of having LinkedIn Recommendations if all someone can say is, “They did what I asked them to do?” What kind of referral is worth having when you are nothing more than an order taker and “service provider?”

Guests in hotels don’t stay forever. Neither do guests in our businesses, whether it’s for a short-term engagement or a relationship that lasts until we retire. So during the time they’re with us, we have to think of it before they do. We have to advise even if they never think to ask for it – because, after all, that’s why they choose us. We have to ask how we’re doing far more often than assume no news is good news.

Brands that only tout their professionalism or years of experience may be able to keep a guest but they won’t get glowing reviews and raving fans. Not by itself. That’s the difference. What they see as advantages are often merely the point of entry of doing business. And as a result of either not looking deeply enough within themselves or asking their own clients how they’re doing with greater humility or both, they think everything is right with the world. Until someone checks out. By then, it’s too late.

One last thought: Hotels don’t have to be The Ritz in order to create a great experience. They need to understand their guests, listen to what they prefer most and deliver that in the most appealing/creative/unexpected/surprising/amazingly efficient way. That’s what extends their stay, motivates them to write better reviews and extoll the virtues of that brand to many others.

Further thoughts and ideas on this?

Be my guest.

The post We Are All In The Hospitality Business. appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

No, You Can’t Evaluate My Website.

Tue, 20 Nov 2012 18:00:00 GMT

Every now and then, I get one of these offers by a web development company to evaluate my website to see what I’m doing well and what I’m not.

You probably have too.

It goes something like this:

“We would like to provide you with a complimentary site evaluation. We will pinpoint any issues we see within your company’s website. Then we will provide recommendations on how to increase web traffic…”

Sounds like a reasonable enough thing, right? You’re not paying anything and they’re offering to help. Except for one thing – getting this kind of evaluation often confuses the heck out of the company that’s receiving it and raises more questions than answers.

Why? Because there are some firms – website and otherwise – that are really great at compiling data but have no idea what to do with it. They provide more numbers to people who already may have had a set of numbers, which in turn makes the marketer say, “So, um, which numbers are the most important here and what does all this really mean?”

Ah. Meaning. Insight. Direction. Now there are some important things. You can’t just spit back a bunch of stats at someone and expect them to magically interpret it in terms of next steps. And if the next steps are, “You need to hire us to help you,” that’s lame.

It’s not to say they’re necessarily off in those statistics. It’s to say that they don’t go nearly far enough to clarify.

Like they’re going to say anything the incumbent agency is doing is going to be great. “Hey, Agency ABC is doing a bang-up job so you don’t need our services…”

Riiiiight.

Show me someone who does this honestly and isn’t trying to poach business. Show me someone who can walk away when the work already done by the existing agency is largely great in their view. I don’t doubt they’re out there, but I don’t think they’re plentiful.

If you’re an agency and your client wants to hear this pitch at all, that should be a red flag. Hopefully not that the client wants to work with someone else but that they are open to hearing other voices in the room on the brand that don’t belong to you. The deeper issue there is that there’s a reason why they have this openness to alternatives. Perhaps you aren’t communicating as clearly what it is you’re doing well or where there can be improvement (come on, you don’t communicate just sunshine and rainbows, do you?)

Back to the web evaluators.

Another problem with their free evaluation pitch is that they assume web traffic is your main focus – but is it? Maybe you’re good on traffic but you’re not hitting well on conversions. Or you’re not able to get enough repeat purchases. You know this but they come in with assumptions that may not match your main priority.

Another problem with their evaluation pitch is that the pitch itself is confined to their expertise but doesn’t speak to all the brand components that you’re dealing with. Is the website the only component of your brand? Hope not and I’ll bet it sure isn’t. So they can’t just drive up to your window and say, “Here’s all the things we think you should do.” Because it’s not just about websites or social media or ads or direct mail. It’s about the brand strategy that drives that stuff beforehand. So while Johnny Web Designer can roll up with his worksheet ready to check off all the areas that need improvement in his view, he’s coming into it with little to no perspective on the overall brand. I’m not talking about hits, impressions or Google Analytics. I’m talking about the goals of your company, how your audience behaves, what the voice of your brand should sound like – the deep stuff that has to be sorted out long before a website goes live. Will he take that into consideration? Probably not.

So what’s a web firm to do if they can’t pitch business in this freebie evaluation way? Work harder and smarter. As in there are tools out there for intelligently getting to know the challenges your prospect is encountering. Yes, that means you have to actually study the prospect before barging in the front door shouting, “We can evaluate your website!” Connect the person’s current challenges to what you believe the website may be neglecting. It shows you actually gave a damn.

If it sounds like you have no choice as a result of this but to be more choosy about who you target, you’re absolutely right. Whether it’s a top 10, 50 or 100, it’s smarter to narrow your focus and study deeper than to do the blanket approach and form letter. It’s true for job hunters and when other types of agencies are targeting accounts – and it’s no different here.

If you want to have a sign-up sheet on your own website to capture evaluations, that’s fine. But utilizing it as your prospecting tool is the wrong way to go. There’s a million web development firms with that approach. If you want to stand out, get to know your prospect better so that when they hopefully do reach out to you, you know plenty about them going in.

You’ve got to work hard to earn the invitation.

The post No, You Can’t Evaluate My Website. appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

Do You Have Enough Beer-Worthy Clients?

Tue, 11 Sep 2012 05:12:00 GMT

The other day I had a client meeting not in a conference room or a Starbucks but the local establishment down the street serving cold frosty ones. It’s not mandatory by any means that my clients go out for a beer with me…but there’s an interesting pattern I’ve seen emerge over the years with the ones that do.

The ones who do seem to open up a little more about what’s on their mind, where they want to take their brand and the greater vision for what they want to achieve will invariably find themselves talking about it to me outside of their walls. And when they do that, they tend to say, “C’mon. Let’s go have a few beers. I want to pick your brain about…”

It’s not about the alcohol, really.
This is a magical moment. What I’m talking about is an extra level beyond the “satisfied client.” I’m talking about the client that sees you as not just a supplier of services but an advisor. A confidant. A consigliere. It’s not just about a conversation about ads or social media or marketing.

It’s a business conversation. A product development conversation. A cultural conversation.

This is rarified ground. Not every client is comfortable taking it here. They have their barriers they want to leave up. For now, anyway.

The ones that don’t have such barriers, however, will often not see themselves in that higher ground of respect they deserve because they’ll think it’s all about the billing that determines their place on the totem pole. Ah, but how wrong these humble souls are.

In truth, they’re giving you access to a deeper level of communication that you won’t get just anywhere. Seize it. These are the ways great relationship stories are told. These people can be your best advocates to others. These are the people who let you in so you can become more than a “writer” or “designer” or whatever you put in your job description.

This is one of the great things I like about calling myself a consultant because I feel the business of helping clients communicate internally and externally could be more consultative than a typical “vendor-client” relationship.

We could all use at least one “beer-worthy” client. Or at least the kind of client you could easily visualize having a few beers with. It doesn’t make it less serious business or that we’re about to get tipsy. Just the opposite. It means a bond is about to be strengthened.

Some will blow this opportunity with schmoozing and sales-ish butt kissing. Please. Don’t be that cheeseball stereotype. Laugh and let your guard down a little. As long as you keep it real about the purpose of why you’re there and stay on point. And above all, use the two devices that so many people neglect – those things on the sides of your head called ears. It is at this moment when they’re opening up even more than usual that intense listening would not be a bad thing.

Just a couple of beers? I call it something more – an opportunity for relationship building on tap. And it’s amazing how it works out that way time and time again with some of the best clients I’ve had and cherish.

Cheers.

The post Do You Have Enough Beer-Worthy Clients? appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

5 ways you aren’t using LinkedIn (but should)

Fri, 17 Aug 2012 17:49:00 GMT

Create a profile. Ask people to connect with you. Update your account with new info.

Technically speaking, it may mean you’re on LinkedIn. But it isn’t really making LinkedIn work for you.

These three steps represent the basic, passive approach that the majority of businesspeople take once they join LinkedIn. In fact, some people don’t even get that far, merely entering the basics into a profile and leaving it as is for months at a time.

Which is a lost opportunity, considering the vast potential and promise it holds, particularly for entrepreneurs

“LinkedIn is the most effective business development tool since the advent of the cellular phone,” says Steve Fretzin, president of Sales Results , a national sales training firm. “In a time when gatekeepers and voicemail have all but eradicated the sales professional, inside connections are sometimes the only way through the door.”

That means entrepreneurs willing to dial it up a notch or two to switch their passive LinkedIn presence into a much more active one can be found more often, prospect for business more productively, leverage their network better and engage in true relationship building.

How? By using these five lesser-used but far more active tactics to power up your presence on LinkedIn:

#1: Rev up your recommendation acquisitions

By themselves, adding recommendations may seem passive, but I’m speaking more of the way in which you view and pursue them. Sure, you probably ask for a recommendation now and then. But every client/strategic partner/employer you have or have ever had a positive outcome with should represent a recommendation on LinkedIn. That’s right. Every single one. After all, shouldn’t someone who has benefited from your services want to say good things about you? Of course they should. This is perhaps the most underutilized feature of LinkedIn.

What’s more, recommendations may be more effective than anything else on your profile, according to Mr. Fretzin.

“A good analogy is how people choose a restaurant these days. We’re living in a time when people are more likely to trust the opinions of someone on Yelp or Urbanspoon than a critic’s review,” he said. “Similarly, on LinkedIn, we’d rather read the recommendations of others than only hearing what the person we are researching has to say. Why? Because we’d rather listen to people who are like us.”

#2: Are they looking at you? Then seize the moment.

When you upgrade to a LinkedIn Premium account, you can see all the people who have looked at your profile as opposed to only the most recent, which you see in the free version. What’s the advantage here? Without being creepy about it (“I saw you were looking at me!”), this represents an opportunity for potential follow-up as chances are good that person has some intent in looking for someone in your field or as a strategic partner.

#3: Optimize your profile for your target

Another advantage of LinkedIn Premium? You can see the search terms people are using to find your profile, which enables you to tailor your profile to incorporate the most popular terms. This goes beyond just tweaking your profile for the sake of appearing in search. It’s taking an active role in seeing how a specific set of search terms resonate with a specific set of people you want to attract more of.

#4: Search smarter and faster

Besides optimizing your profile to be found more easily, the other side of the search equation is in searching for your ideal prospect faster without restrictions. The Premium level enables you to save serious time by quickly zeroing in on prospects based on criteria such as seniority, company size, function, groups and more.

#5: Maximize activity with a warmer introduction

How often are you asked for an introduction to someone in your network?

How often do you ask a connection to introduce you to someone in their network.

Not much? You’re not alone. By themselves, cocktail hour networking and morning coffee chats may seem productive, but one of the biggest mistakes Mr. Fretzin sees people make is when they equate increased networking activity with progress – and becoming frustrated when relationships stall. A third-party introduction via LinkedIn can change that dynamic.

“The typical networker is only 10 percent effective at obtaining a quality introduction from someone they meet through networking,” Mr. Fretzin said. “Ninety percent of the time, people are just meeting people for meeting people’s sake. LinkedIn can take networking to another level when you leverage past or existing clients to get introduced to that person’s network at a high level.”

I’ll contend there are certain areas with LinkedIn that could allow for far more of a true business dashboard that incorporates a CRM, complete social networking, video conferencing and more. If and when it ever gets to that point, look out.

But let’s not wait for that evolution before evolving ourselves – because by turning the typically passive presence on LinkedIn into a more active one, we won’t just be standing out from the majority. We’ll be more likely to transform mere “Connections” into real relationships.

And isn’t that what we’re there to do?

The post 5 ways you aren’t using LinkedIn (but should) appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

The Dumbest Thing You Can Do On LinkedIn

Thu, 09 Aug 2012 17:19:00 GMT

LinkedIn isn’t for racking up as many connections as possible and turning people into a pack of baseball trading cards. At its best, it’s a way for taking the next step in a business relationship, forging a strategic partnership, getting educated from a trustworthy resource and/or introducing two parties that could be a fit.

It can also be a great way to share blog posts, presentations, groups, associations and bolster your personal profile. Nothing wrong with that at all.

That should be at least enough to start with, right?

Good. So Don’t Do This:

A) Make a connection with someone
B) Spam them via private message with your self-promotional garbage as the first or only method of communicating.

It’s called relationship building. Getting to know someone. Even if I have a need for your product or service, you do not deserve to be called back by anyone if you send a blanket email as a first form of introduction that does not appear to address their needs. They just gave you permission to connect with them and you decide that that gives you license to push ad messages to them?

Just one question for anyone who makes practice of such a tactic: Are you kidding me with this?

We are entering a time that will only demand greater personalization .
One-on-one communication will rule the day even more.
Consequently, identifying the best targets in the interest of time will be in ever-greater demand.
And the companies that can leverage these tools to get to that more likely target to have a customized conversation will find themselves ahead of the game.

Meanwhile, their competitors will send one message to all of their LinkedIn followers all the time, pat themselves on the back for their supreme knowledge of social media and brag in networking settings about how they’re really utilizing LinkedIn to work their network.

Bullcrap.

You’re advertising your own stuff and not getting to know your audience. It’s easy. It’s also lazy and, for many, largely ineffective.

To be clear, I’m not saying to stop sending out e-newsletters or e-mails or other pieces of communication that go to many people at once. I’m saying if I never met you before in my life, that would not be an ideal way to first meet you. Agreed?

I’m working on an article with the help of Steve Fretzin from Sales Results on the best uses of LinkedIn, including methods that aren’t merely of the passive variety. I look forward to sharing it with you very shortly.

In the interim, when you make a connection with someone on LinkedIn, see if the possibility exists for you to have coffee, breakfast, lunch or a drink after work. If they’re remote, could it be a Skype call or phone call? I admittedly haven’t done this every time with every one of my connections, but I’m aiming to up the ratio to be far more personal. That way, when I do have something to invite them to, hopefully they’ll have had at least one touch where we understood more about one another.

Having 5000 connections means nothing if you don’t get to know them.

The post The Dumbest Thing You Can Do On LinkedIn appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

Panera Cares baking up an evolved business model

Wed, 08 Aug 2012 15:16:00 GMT

“Being an entrepreneur is about seeing opportunity. It’s easy to write a check. But the real challenge for corporations like us is…what if we could solve some of these core problems too?”

– Ron Shaich, Founder, Chairman and Co-CEO, Panera Bread Co.

Sometimes when entrepreneurs talk about giving back to the community, it can feel as though it’s a convenient extra that’s good for PR or a team bonding day. Is it a nice gesture from that company? Absolutely. But it’s not exactly baked into the fabric of what the brand is all about either.

Which is what makes Panera Cares Café , the pay-by-donation restaurant concept from Panera Bread Company, so intriguing to me as a template for other businesses to potentially follow.

I had the opportunity last week to sit down with Panera’s Founder, Chairman and co-CEO, Ron Shaich, to learn more about the idea when he came to Chicago to open a Panera Cares in Lakeview (formerly a regular Panera Bread Co. restaurant), the 4 ^th of its kind within the Panera restaurant system.

What I really wanted to find out was: Can a company find success and profit from a business model that expects people to do the right thing?

At first, I wasn’t certain. Sure, when you first learn about a restaurant that lets people pay what they want so that someone who has only small amount of money can buy anything on the menu, your first thought is, “Wow, that’s so nice of them to donate food to the community like that.” But as Shaich explains, there’s something deeper at work here.

“(Panera Cares) comes out of a view of the world in which the way in which businesses most succeed is when they make a difference for lots of different people. That’s the guts of Panera’s success since I founded it 25 years ago.”

Corporations give money and Panera is no different – franchisees included, the company has given near $100 million in donations to its surrounding communities. Still, Shaich says this method of donation felt a bit disconnected from Panera’s everyday work.

“One of the things that became clear to me is that a food shelter can be a dehumanizing experience. What we want to bring is a whole lot of positive energy out there.”

Are there lessons from Panera Cares that other businesses might apply to their brands if they’re trying to evolve their model for greater community tie-in and profitability? Start with these ideas:

See yours as more than an office/retail location.

Normally we refer to places like Panera as restaurants, but Shaich used the term, “Community centers.” With thousands of locations around the country, Panera supports the places where people gather and build community. And having witnessed it firsthand myself as a member of the neighborhood Panera Cares belongs to, you can see it’s a statement that’s entirely credible. These are places where everyone is meeting from networking businesspeople to running associations to seniors getting together for their regularly scheduled breakfast.

There certainly are other coffee shops that could offer this type of environment, but those tend to be people zoned in on the laptop in front of them. The difference I see at Panera (and now Panera Cares) is that community conversations are more likely and often to occur here.

Is there a vision you see for your place of business that transcends the traditional setting people expect of it in a unique way?

How is this baked into your brand?

Again, Panera Cares doesn’t feel like a special case outside of the Panera brand but more of something natural to do for the community. Part of that to me is due to the fact that nothing here is sacrificed or stripped down from what people have come to appreciate about Panera.

“We said if we were going to do this and put the Panera name on it, we were going to keep all the good stuff and leave nothing out,” Shaich says. “The whole menu would have to stay as is. There’s no abbreviated version.”

There’s also no altered version of the environment. For all intents and purposes, the soul of the Panera brand looks and feels the same but with an even more amplified mission behind it.

Without sacrificing anything that your customers have come to know and love about you, how can your business model flow into a natural community benefit?

Do customers clearly understand your mission?

Since Panera Cares is different from the traditional restaurant concept, Shaich recognized that people would need to understand how the payment system works and the overall “big picture” of what Panera Cares is aiming to accomplish. That’s why every Panera Cares also features an employee “ambassador” stationed at the front of the customer line who explains the pay-by-donation method and other customer questions. Had Panera Cares not had this, you can imagine how it might create a bottleneck of questions once each person arrived to pay and make for a frustrating experience. With one simple addition, that challenge is largely solved.

Don’t just expect a creative business model to tell your story for you. How can you help customers down the tracks with greater clarity so they get where you’re trying to go?

Where is your “ambassador” stationed within your brand to explain your model’s purpose? Is it a physical presence like this one or an online one? Consider how essential that might be, especially as you’re trying to turn customers into advocates.

What discussion are you elevating?

The distinction here is elevating a discussion, not trying to deliver a solution to the world’s problems. “(Panera Cares) isn’t about solving the hunger issue or solving poverty,” Shaich says. “It’s about food insecurity. Food insecurity happens when people who don’t know where their next meal is coming from or how to pay for it.

Shaich says that 1 in 6 Americans have experienced food insecurity in the last year. But while the assumption by some may be that these people are largely homeless, it’s actually a small percentage of the overall amount. In fact, of the people who do experience food insecurity, 1 in 3 are college educated.

What is the issue that you’re trying to elevate for greater awareness in the community? And rather than trying to singlehandedly eradicate a problem on your own, how is your brand involving that community – offline and online – so you can work on it together?

Get everyone involved from the top down

When he opened the first Panera Cares, Shaich didn’t just tell someone to report back to him how the business was going. He worked there for the first few weeks just like other employees. In the process, he got to not only see how well the system was working firsthand but also how customers were responding to the new concept.

A great idea on paper can have hiccups in reality. So for internal and external customers, it’s vital for management to get out from behind the desk, out of the office and into the “trenches” with employees so you can see what’s working and what needs to be tweaked. Not to mention it provides a greater perspective on the impact of the brand.

Be transparent

As Shaich explains, “If people feel like they’re being gamed, they’ll reject it. So it’s about transparency, not taking advantage of people in some way. It’s about showing people how to pay it forward.”

Don’t present something as a gift for the community and have motives that community isn’t aware about. Put it all out there and be clear about what you’re taking in from the effort financially. Lack of transparency clouds the message of your true purpose and becomes a competing factor you don’t need.

Don’t just give a handout.

Panera Cares may appear like a gift to the community but the community also has to sustain it. There’s still a business to be run with real costs. But anything Panera Cares generates in excess of covering its operating expenses is given back to the community in training at-risk kids. “We work with social services to give kids the life and work skills they need, promising them a job when they get done,” Shaich says. Panera Cares has put dozens of young people through this program.

Plus, while you don’t have to leave any money if you can’t afford a Panera Cares item, they do ask that if you do that regularly that you volunteer your time with them. So there’s real training for someone’s benefit, not mere goodwill gestures.

Remember, you’re not running a charity. You’re running a community-based business model. So while you’re giving, don’t be afraid to express the expectations you have of your customers in return.

Maybe if this economy of ours is going to continue to recover with the help of healthier corporations, the answer won’t just come from increased hiring but also from a whole new business model that benefits the community and brand alike in a way that’s also quite profitable. It’s not a big departure but as a natural evolution of what the brand stands for. I like what Panera’s doing with Panera Cares toward that end. I’d love to know others who have bright ideas like this too.

The post Panera Cares baking up an evolved business model appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

When Social Media Channels Don’t Matter

Thu, 02 Aug 2012 15:14:00 GMT

If you don’t have a brand strategy and rich, compelling content to supply people on at least a semi-consistent basis, I don’t care how many social media channels are out there. You should not be on a single one of them until you figure out what your purpose is and what you’re going to supply in the way of content that people can benefit from.

Until you address that, you have no heart. No soul. No story. No brand.

“Should we be on Facebook?” If you don’t know what you’re going to say there? No.

“Should we be on Pinterest since there’s a lot of women on it and we’re a female-owned company?”
No. You should be on Pinterest if you see an opportunity for people to piece together what you believe and value as a brand (or as a person behind that brand). The fact you share a gender has nothing to do with it.

“I have 25,000 followers on Twitter.” Am I supposed to be impressed by that, really? You could’ve bought those for all I know. Which, by the way, is really stupid and less than genuine. Now, if you were someone who got to that point of greatness through your constant back-and-forth interaction, I think you’ve got something. More than something, actually. You have a story to tell that provides a continuous stream of content that people can benefit from? You’ve got some meat to go with those potatoes. Some heart and soul. Some vision.

“Should we be on (insert any social media channel you want here) since our competitors are there?” No. At least not for that reason alone. Because all you’re doing is playing monkey see, monkey do and following their every move. Do you want to have a purpose or do you want to be a puppet?

Social media is the megaphone. But without knowing what to say and how to say it, all that comes out of it is noise.

For some of you, this may be elementary. If so, my apologies. But there’s still a lot of people out there who are putting up Facebook pages, Twitter handles, YouTube channels and Pinterest boards… without knowing why. Don’t put up a social media channel because everybody’s doing it. Be able to say “We put up a Facebook Page because our audience is there, it’s the best place for us to convey what our brand is trying to say, it’s where we’ve seen strong interaction, etc.”

It’s like buying a house and saying afterward, “Why did we buy that?”

Your spouse looks at you and says, “Well, because everybody said we should.”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t fit with our life’s plan or our goals. I don’t even know if I’m going to like this neighborhood a few years from now.”

“Well, jeez. Why are you telling me this now after we just invested in one of the most important purchases of our lives?”

It’s not easy to walk away from that decision, obviously. Once you’re in, you’re there to stay for a while. It’s not that different from the social media commitment in a way. If you’ve already “bought” a place on social media, it’s hard to suddenly say, “You know what, online universe? We don’t want to be on this channel after all. Never mind.”

It’s not too late to turn that ship around. But take a look in the mirror and ask why you’re there and what you want to say. Everyone should do this self-check regularly, myself included.

The story of your brand can never stop being told. Don’t waste another moment finding out what yours is.

The post When Social Media Channels Don’t Matter appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

This chicken sandwich doesn’t reflect my political views OR When Personal Beliefs and Brands Don’t Mix.

Tue, 24 Jul 2012 14:55:00 GMT

Should highly visible C-Level executives state their political and religious opinions freely without fear of repercussion to the brand?

I didn’t ask if they can . I asked if they should . Should we defend what is Constitutionally correct if it is strategically inconsistent with the brand?

“The Chick-fil-A culture and service tradition in our restaurants is to treat every person with honor, dignity and respect — regardless of their belief, race, creed, sexual orientation or gender.”
– Chick-fil-A Company Statement

“We are very much supportive of the family – the biblical definition of the family. We are a family-owned business, a family-led business and we are married to our first wives.”
– Chick-fil-A President-Chief Operating Officer Dan Cathy

A few years ago, I was thrilled to partake of a new restaurant that served Italian beef and was adorned with Chicago sports merchandise throughout. It was heavenly. And I suspect because the owner of the restaurant was looking to those heavens on Sunday rather than keeping his store open to Chicago Bears fans who like football and Italian beef that day most of all, his great store closed down soon thereafter. His beliefs were admirable and what he was freely entitled to, but it also sabotaged the big picture of his brand and what his audience wanted.

I’m disappointed in Chick-fil-A President Dan Cathy for this very reason.

Thanks to what he told Baptist Press in an interview, he’s turned where I eat chicken into a statement on whether or not I support gay marriage. If that sounds ridiculous or an overreaction, go to Chick-fil-A’s Facebook page and see the comments for yourself. It’s a full-on discussion of the pros and cons of gay marriage.

Considering the reaction some of my friends had to Mr. Cathy’s public support of traditional marriage, it’s certainly harder for me to a public advocate for that brand on Facebook or elsewhere. Regardless of my stance on the issue.

And that’s too bad. Because from a product standpoint, I love Chick-fil-A. I love their sandwiches, I love their shakes, I love their fries and because I’m 5 lbs. overweight, I probably love it all a little too much.

But now, we can’t have a discussion about a really great product with really great people working there, can we? We have to have a discussion about what eating a damn chicken sandwich means for what we believe politically or religiously.

I’d like a Common Sense Meal, please.

So indulge me enough so we can suspend debate of that political issue for a moment and think about this. Maybe I shouldn’t shop at Whole Foods because I don’t agree with John Mackey’s position on the health care debate. Maybe I shouldn’t be a Cubs fan because a member of Ricketts family wanted to run a vicious anti-Obama ad. Maybe the CEO of Macy’s says something tomorrow in conflict with my beliefs…do I avoid the next 50% Off Sale?

Maybe some actually will and do in these circumstances. That’s their right and I respect that decision.

But also respect that I’m still going to go to Cubs games. I’m still going to shop where I want to shop. I’m still going to eat where I want to eat. And I’m not the one in the wrong for doing so.

When the customer/brand advocate has to be moved from defending the brand’s product or service to an uncomfortable position of defending the CEO’s beliefs, I don’t place blame on the customer. I place blame and full responsibility on the executive for putting them in that potentially difficult position at all.

Yes, they are entitled to their beliefs. It is their American right. Whether or not it actually is right.

BUT just because something is covered by freedom of speech doesn’t make it a good idea for the brand. Not by a longshot.

The conversation shouldn’t be about Christianity or gay marriage or traditional marriage or Southern Baptists.

The conversation should be about the fact that people love to camp out before a Chick-fil-A store’s grand opening. It should be about the fact that people love those cow mascots of theirs so much that they’ll clamor for a cow calendar. It should be about a product that is fantastic in my book, not The Book.

Sometimes the conversation has been about the fact that the chain is closed on Sundays and what that means, but it hasn’t really been a major dividing line.

This is where the “If you don’t like it, don’t eat there” argument is too easy. I love the product. But what if I just think its chief executive has the wrong opinion? Why can’t I have both? Are we really that stupid that we can’t distinguish the difference?

But I’m not going to suggest that Chick-fil-A should be left off the hook either. What I’m talking about is evolution. No, not “Evolution,” but brand evolution. As in taking a hard look and realizing expansion demands adjustment to new demographic audiences and adjustment to new times. When the city of Boston declares it’s not going to allow the company to open franchises there, that should be a signal that a re-evaluation may be in order. Truett Cathy founded Chick-fil-A in a Georgia suburb in 1946. Well, it’s not 1946 and the brand isn’t just in Georgia anymore.

Brands and the values that go with them should be allowed to naturally evolve as they expand, especially as they enter more cosmopolitan and diverse areas rather than rural ones. 12 years ago, the closest Chick-fil-A from me was three hours away in downstate Bloomington, Illinois. Today, it’s steps from Michigan Avenue and less than 3 miles from the most predominantly gay neighborhood in Chicago.

The next move should be an apology from Dan Cathy, but not for the reason you may think. It should be because of the fact that he made himself the story when he’s not and shouldn’t be . He should issue a statement personally that sounds like so:

“My political and religious beliefs are my own and not a reflection of Chick-fil-A’s company policy, which aims to be inclusive to all sexual orientations. I apologize to every employee who serves our brand and every customer who consumes our brand, who may have been offended by my recent statements. I take responsibility for putting you in a potentially difficult and uncomfortable position of defending beliefs you may not share. ”

I don’t want religion and politics brought into where I eat chicken. The guy who makes that chicken should get that too. For the good for the brand, at the very least.

The post This chicken sandwich doesn’t reflect my political views OR When Personal Beliefs and Brands Don’t Mix. appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

Nobody wins The Cheapies or The Speedies.

Fri, 20 Jul 2012 18:21:00 GMT

Do you ever notice that there are no awards shows in the advertising industry for being the fastest?
Do you ever notice there are none for being the cheapest?

I do, however, notice a whole lot of awards for being the most creative . Or the most effective .

Clios. One Show. Addys. Effies. Cannes. And so on.

Some of us get lucky enough to hoist these awards high in front of our peers and put them in our offices. And let’s face it with no apologies. It feels really, really good.

When it comes down to it, you will never get awarded for being the cheapest and you will never get awarded for being the fastest. It’s not even a great thing to get referred for – when I actually was, it was a disaster.

I actually had someone stand up in front of a room – more than once – and do this:

“Dan is great and I only had to pay him $____!” Oh no. You didn’t. It was the worst “compliment” I could’ve ever received.

Point being, it’s up to you whether you want to enter a formal awards show, but what matters more for positioning and a referral is valuing quality over price or speed. Some say, “It can be about quality, speed or price. You can have 2 but not all 3.”

Sure, you can have two of those, but in the end, there’s really only one that matters.

Strive to be about quality. That’s it.

Because quality is what’s ultimately the most fulfilling to you.
Because quality is what’s the most referable.
Because quality enables you to command greater leverage on taking more precious time you rarely have.
Because quality gets you to a place where you can command more money.

Or perhaps you don’t want fulfillment, referrals, quality time and greater income. If not, my mistake.

Did I say that focusing on quality first and foremost gives us license to take as much as time as we like? Oh no. Did I say we always get what we want money-wise? Unfortunately, not always.

But there are going to be people around us that pressure us for that ad now, now, now. There are going to be prospects who pressure us on price and shoot lines our way like, “If you do this for a little (or a lot) less now, I know a lot of people/there will be a lot of more work like this to come.”

You can play these games and see if it works out. But I also see people who get burned by this song-and-dance of “risk now and hope for something better later.”

How do you avoid giving into these pressures? It’s not easy. But I reached a point in my career – with the help of some very supportive mentors, colleagues, friends and family (you know who you are) – where I had unwavering faith in my own talent to stay strong and believe in what I was charging and how long I needed to do it right. From that moment on, I was done trying to be known, intentionally or not, as the guy who could do more in less time.

Because being that guy did nothing for me. It paid me no dividends. It earned me no referrals.

Why? Because I wasn’t positioning myself as the guy built for quality, even though what I was producing was high quality. I was positioning myself for speed and probably some value first. The quality guy I knew I was was suffering and I didn’t realize it.

So yes, that means you have to gently and diplomatically push back on price and timelines. I’m not saying to be a jerk about it. I’m saying to negotiate in your best interests rather than putting on a paper hat and asking if you may take their order. You have to be clear as day on what you’re providing for the time required.

The “Anybody Who Wants My Services” Problem

You also have to constantly work on thinking about who you want and don’t want to work with . If you don’t define this, I have found there is a direct correlation between working with people who tend to be cheap and speedy vs. people who respect and value quality . And why wouldn’t there be when it’s clear you’ll take anybody who comes through the door?

The way to begin thinking this issue is through what’s called a Buyer Persona . Think about the most enjoyable client relationship you’ve ever had. It doesn’t have to be a relationship you still have at your current company.

Think about that person and where they stand in their organization. Consider the challenges they face in a day and why they chose you in the first place. Who else were they thinking about choosing? Are there any other challenges they deal with internally that might influence the direction of your relationship?

Now think about the top 5-10 of those Buyer Personas.
What’s the common thread that runs through those people?

What common traits do they possess? Don’t just think about on-the-surface stuff like age, title and location. What are the behavioral and emotional aspects they share considering they are going to choose you based on behaviors and emotions you elicit? You will have to dig deeper for this. But it’s worth it.

These are the people who represent the bulls-eye on the dartboard or close to it. The people who are more likely to see your services as an investment rather than a cost . I am continually working to understand them better, speak to them better and customize my offerings around them better. They don’t represent just “anybody.”

Your strategic partners need to understand that too – so they can get the value you bring to the table and be advocates for your brand when you’re not in the room. Hold them to this and make sure they get it. Meet with them monthly or quarterly. It’s probably best if they don’t place a huge value on being the cheapest or the fastest, because they may not get where you’re coming from and it wouldn’t jive with what you value most.

At the end of the day, when you are standing there with your award or a glowing email from your client for a job well done or a promotion, not many people will remember the mini-battles you had to fight to carve a little more time and a little more money. I suppose someone could say, “Yeah, he did an outstanding job and the client loves it, but he was a couple hours too slow on that one day.” But that’s getting into some petty territory if you ask me.

If we’re lucky to do what we love for a living, we get a small window of time to do it. And once it’s over, how do you want them to talk about you? That you were the cheapest? That you were the fastest?

I didn’t think so.

The post Nobody wins The Cheapies or The Speedies. appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

Are We Giving “Buzz” Way Too Much Weight?

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 23:15:00 GMT

“So, we’ll like, create a series of posters that are really in your face. Offensive to some, but whatever. It’s going to generate such a buzz. And everybody will be all over it in the media, so it’s a win-win.”

I picture the person saying this to be a Creative Director with a goatee, thin glasses, maybe a funky hat of some sort that’s backward. Oh, he’s so cutting edge. After all, he worked at DBKCF&GHA and worked on (Insert Campaign He Likes To Name Drop Here). Yes, I’m stereotyping. Like you haven’t seen a version of this person.

When marketing efforts like the recent “ Deserve To Die ” posters surfaced, I had to stop and wonder:

Where does cause marketing get off angering, hurting and offending without cluing in the people it’s trying to enlist to join its cause?

When it causes head-scratching to the point of where someone wants to violently rip down the ad, does achieving “buzz” become overvalued?

After all, these ads got buzz. And the cause behind it, Lung Cancer Alliance, is certainly a worthy one. I’m no fan of lung cancer, are you?

So why is getting buzz for it wrong? Because the strategy is so off. Consider this: In these ads, I have told that if I belong to a certain set of people, I deserve to die. Or that someone I care about deserves to die.

Most of us know there’s more to the story. But then, we wouldn’t really know what that is at this point, would we?

Because that’s the extent of the teaser ad. No call to action. No website. No QR code. Nothing. Just telling certain people they’re as good as dead and deserve to be.

I suppose that my writing about it proves that people noticed the work. But what troubles me about the whole thing was that it took too long for us to figure out the point of that work. The idea behind the “Deserve to Die” theme was to clear up a misconception that people who get lung cancer must have done something to deserve it, which is not necessarily true.

So to prove how absurd that sounds, posters with the message of “Hipsters Deserve to Die,” “Cat Lovers Deserve to Die,” and “The Tattooed Deserve to Die” started appearing across the country.

OK. I get it now. It’s still a reach.

I’m just not sure that people who are cat lovers are going to follow this awareness/conversion sequence:

“What the hell is this? Saying I deserve to die? Oh, it’s about lung cancer. So what you’re trying to say here is that people who die of lung cancer didn’t do something to deserve it, which is a misconception. Therefore, I guess it’s OK you said I should die. And I’ll support you now.”

Wow. Talk about a long and winding road.

In contrast, I like the guerrilla work behind the “Truth” anti-smoking efforts in recent years so much more. Why? It doesn’t insult the audience into trying to make its point. It says, “Hey, we’re all in this together against the big, bad, evil tobacco companies who are manipulating the people we love into buying an addictive product.”

It actually tried to rally us to work together against an identifiable enemy , almost immediately. Not divide us or keep us in the dark for days and weeks. In the “Truth” ads, we’re only in the dark for about 10-15 seconds tops before we understand the message quite well and what we need to do from here.

The people behind the “Deserve To Die” ads may say that lung cancer is the enemy we could rally around, but how long did it take us to find this out? Too long. Far too long. In a worse case scenario, I shudder to think about what kind of sick wackjob might’ve done harm to someone because a poster told him that someone deserved to die. In a lesser scenario, this kind of teaser doesn’t satisfy a society built on immediate gratification of answers. We get these answers from our search engines, from our social networks, from our smartphone apps. We expect the same in relatively short order from our other forms of media too and when we can’t get there by at least being given an outlet to use those devices, we turn into versions of the Hulk that want to smash things in our path. Including the brands and causes that made our lives that difficult.

I don’t mind when people stage a “body bag” event outside of a tobacco company to illustrate how many people die from smoking every day. The key here is that you can be provocative, even shockingly offensive to some, when the payoff is right there to complete the loop.

People often need that. It’s not that they’re stupid. It’s not that they’re mindless drones who will buy whatever we tell them to. It’s that they deserve more information for the buy-in of your work being in their face and them absorbing it. Teasers can’t hang like this for weeks on end, causing anger, hurt and frustration at an enemy that turns out to be a worthy cause. Because by then, it’s too late for people to fully understand what’s going on.

Nobody deserves that from advertising.

The post Are We Giving “Buzz” Way Too Much Weight? appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

State Farm Shows Off Its Entrepreneurial Side

Thu, 21 Jun 2012 22:37:00 GMT

2 members of IDEO Chicago offer words of wisdom on pushing the boundaries of design and development in between lightning rounds of pitching during Next Door’s “Amplify’d” event.

But make no mistake. He’s making The Leap. Because what he does have is a promising piece of software with slick interface that delivers the most viable job candidates to recruiters.

Of course, he wasn’t alone. Last Thursday, 20 other startups made the cut to join him for “ Amplify’d ,” a one-day lightning round of pitches at State Farm Next Door . During the event at the part community workspace, part café, each participant had 5 minutes to pitch their ideas to a panel of judges from incubators, retail consultancies and business accelerators.

Think Chicago’s version of “Shark Tank,” but a little kinder and gentler (these are still the people behind the concept of being a Good Neighbor, after all).

As the participants gave their pitches, I could see the judges would have their work cut out for them in selecting one brilliant idea above all or even a few.

How useful would it be to have an app that helped me find everything in the neighborhood for my dog?

What kind of progress could a pair of multisensory gloves with sensors and lights make during interactive therapy for children with Autism?

How many times would I love to have a “Hold-On” button on my phone to tell the caller I would be answering momentarily?

In between the lightening rounds, speakers from IDEO Chicago, BodyShopBids.com and RentStuff.com offered some words of wisdom and war stories about obtaining funding. Like every entrepreneur (myself included), they had made plenty of mistakes between where they began and where they are today – and learned what to do differently. But despite all those miscalculations, false assumptions and disappointments, I’m fairly certain they wouldn’t have traded the experience for anything. Even when the alternative was the “sure, safe thing.”

And the winner is…

In the end, the winner of “Amplify’d” was a mobile app called FasPark that delivers real-time local information about street parking and provides a driving path for getting there. Which couldn’t be more fitting, considering we were in one of the hardest areas to find parking in the city.

Second place went to eduLaunchPad.com, a “next generation” college search site where families of college students can find the best potential opportunities for financial aid and potentially minimize the student’s loan debt upon graduation significantly.

The third place award was given to a former college professor turned entrepreneur who developed an educational app called Nidaba. Designed to send daily activities to the parents of K-12 students, the app incorporates social gaming, points and badges so that completing learning challenges is a fun experience for parents and their children alike.

In a way, State Farm was on the big stage too.

In my view, “Amplify’d” represented one of the bigger moments for State Farm Next Door in its first year of operation. At its most ideal, it’s a community hub for collaborating and holding business meetings. But events like this are the much-needed extra step to build credibility even further – an excellent opportunity for the company to show its support to the very same entrepreneurs who might be using its space regularly to brainstorm how to get their ideas off the ground. For the good of building Next Door’s brand presence and judging by the participation, I hope they’ll continue with events like it.

Finally, forgive me for briefly getting on the soapbox: “Amplify’d” got me thinking that if more corporations hosted events like this to give aspiring entrepreneurs a greater spotlight for potential funding, we’d further develop and strengthen another needed financial avenue to the small businesses that are often referred to as the lifeblood of the economy. Not to mention it’s good PR for the brand hosting it, other sponsors/judges and of course, the entrepreneurs themselves.

At the very least, it’s the kind of event that’s a lot more exciting than watching entrepreneurs fill out paperwork for a bank loan.

The post State Farm Shows Off Its Entrepreneurial Side appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

With so many social media tools, why do things still feel broken?

Wed, 30 May 2012 22:32:00 GMT

Um, may I ask a stupid question? Who said Pinterest may be right for the brand at all in the first place?

Focusing on the tools first is short-sighted but some marketers don’t know any better than what they’ve been told. Let’s take it a step back and get back to things like company vision, mission, culture…essentially your company’s reason for being.

If you’re confused on that or your company isn’t on the same page on that, you’re only adding to the problem by trying to communicate a message of who you are that people within aren’t completely on board with. Fix that part of the house first. It may take a few months, but the social media tools will still be there by the time you’re done. I’d wager there will probably be 1000 more to choose from anyway.

Let me know if you need a hand sorting any of it out – Dan@ChicagoBrander.com

The post With so many social media tools, why do things still feel broken? appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

How Much Do Clients Care About Advertising Awards Shows?

Tue, 22 May 2012 16:01:00 GMT

If you’re in a position to influence agency decisions, I have a simple enough question for today.

I just want to know, once and for all, if you ever chose an advertising agency primarily because of the fact that they won creative awards.

There’s no right or wrong answer to this. Was it a:

A) Determining factor in your decision
B) Nice support point to help justify your decision
C) A total afterthought that had no bearing on your decision

I know that generally speaking, agency people value them for a variety of reasons. There’s absolutely no doubt how good it feels to win and to accept an award with your team. I know and I get it. But I’m wondering whether or not there’s a disconnect if the outside world views these shows with as much weight. Frankly, with the changing economic and media landscape (we’re awarding for TV spots above all in a world that’s shifting more to digital by the day?), I’m just not as sure as I once was. I think they like getting a plaque of the award on their wall. But how much does that really mean? I think they like telling the people above of the agency’s success, but how much do those people above really care?

Does it help indirectly with reputation building? Sure. I can see that. But I’m talking about direct impact if that’s possible.

Agency folks are welcome to answer this question similarly –

What’s the ROI of entering?
Can you measure it and draw a direct line from statues to new business or more pitch invites?

Or was that even your goal? Was internal morale building as a result of victories the primary goal instead and new business was a nice “extra”? And if you didn’t enter, why?

Ponder that and let me know your thoughts if you would. Again, there’s no wrong answer and I realize the answer can depend on different types of client personalities and values. But I’d like to hear the shared stories and views regardless. Many thanks in advance.

The post How Much Do Clients Care About Advertising Awards Shows? appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

Are we doing wrong in creating “what the client likes”?

Thu, 17 May 2012 14:03:00 GMT

A few years back, when I was working in a 900-person ad agency, a new Copywriter entered our group. As he set up shop in the office next to me, he asked:

“So…this Creative Director. What kind of stuff does he like?”

“Excuse me?”

“You know, what kind of copy does he typically approve? What’s easier to get through and flies with him? Does he have a style he likes to see?”

I was taken aback by the question.What does it matter if it’s a smart idea and the right kind of idea for the brand? If you’re a compelling strategist and presenter, so what if you have to sell a little harder to persuade someone to choose it?

Here are some variations of things I have heard:

“Bob doesn’t like seeing images of people looking directly at him.”

“Can we make sure the copy isn’t so negative-sounding? Janet doesn’t typically approve that.”

“Sam is big on making sure we list all of our services and in bullet point.”

“Laura tends to be more of an Earth-tone color person so our layout should have that. Get rid of these bright colors.”

“I like pink. If you give me anything with pink in the ad, I’ll approve it. Pink, pink, pink.”

“I know what you’re saying, I love it and I think the audience would love it. But it’ll never fly with this client. He doesn’t do humor.”

“Gary’s always been more comfortable with traditional media. Put more of that into your strategy than the online stuff and he’ll like it.”

If you’re in Advertising long enough, you’ll learn that revisions are part of the natural order. Things don’t sail through with ease. They get analyzed. They run through a gauntlet of account and creative people taking hacks at the work. And if emerges unscathed, it goes out the door to a client that – you guessed it – takes more hacks at it. As Luke Sullivan, author of “Hey Whipple, Squeeze This!” calls it, it’s the “Death by A Thousand Tiny Cuts.”

Nature of the beast, I suppose. But that doesn’t mean you take the easy way out to avoid it at all costs. That includes writing for people who aren’t in the target audience. This is why answering the “What kind of work do they like?” question may win the battle but ultimately loses the war on several fronts.

First, it’s created with the endgame of trying to ensure the idea sees the light of day. That’s woefully short-sighted.
If your idea does get through but can’t connect with the audience because all you were concerned with was appeasing internal forces, how does that benefit the agency or client? It doesn’t. It does a disservice to them, even if they can’t automatically grasp why that idea is the right one. And that will only come back to hurt you.

Second, the end buyer is an afterthought with a question like this.
The Creative Director and client are buyers of the idea but they are not buyers of the product. If you’re not thinking about those end buyers, you’re not doing justice to the client’s brand, the agency or yourself. We don’t always reach the goal of creating the kind of amazing ideas we want to, but we always have to try and push as far as we can until then. Even if it’s the harder road to take.

Third, you lose your identity as a writer or designer.
It becomes their message. Their design. Their tone. Their style. You become a clone of them. But your Creative Director or client doesn’t need a clone. If they’re any good at their job at all and not a complete dictator, he or she needs different perspectives other than their own that produce creative surprises, not what they want and expect to see.

Yes, I know this isn’t art and can’t be an expression of whatever we want. That’s selfish because it becomes all about us rather than, again, the target audience. But there is a difference between creating and order taking .

Creating gives meaningful thought to the challenge and considers how to speak to the audience in unexpected ways that resonate with them. Order taking gives no meaningful thought and only considers what your boss or the client wants to say or design. You lose a bit of your soul the more this happens.

Think of how this applies to something else, like music. There will be only one U2. One Coldplay. One Foo Fighters. One Leonard Bernstein. One Stephen Sondheim. One Mozart. Is it better to emulate someone who has already produced something great or is it worthwhile to create something on our own? Some people are all for the first option and get fulfillment off of that – cover bands, essentially. They can be talented in their own right but they aren’t bringing anything new to the table we didn’t expect. If you play 80’s rock, we’re going to expect 80’s rock. There’s safety in that because people can identify with your music and you may get a great turnout at the local bar.

But if you create something from scratch that you think the end audience may like? The stakes and risks are higher. They don’t know your music because it’s original. It’s new and different to their ears. The road to success is a lot harder, from sleeping in vans to playing in the worst bars imaginable for little money at first. And yet, if you have even a moderate amount of success beyond this level, you surpass any kind of fame the cover band will have. Because you’re giving people the unexpected. They then anticipate that and appreciate that. They tell others. Your fan base grows.

Playing to the immediate crowd is safe. If you’re comfortable with being a cover band in the creative world, good luck and I hope it works out. But if you can stomach the harder road by striving to deliver the unexpected rather than what you know they want, I’ll be raising a lighter high to salute you.

The post Are we doing wrong in creating “what the client likes”? appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

State Farm Next Door helps VCs and entrepreneurs connect with “Amplify’d”

Fri, 04 May 2012 16:00:00 GMT

It’s time to find out once and for all if that new business idea of yours was meant to fly. Or rather, get “Amplify’d.”

Next Door , the new concept from State Farm launched last year that’s part innovation lab, part community space and part café, is giving aspiring entrepreneurs the opportunity to pitch their ideas to several venture capital groups and angel investors.

The one-day lightning round on Thursday, June 14 called “Amplify’d” will consist of 20-30 pitches from startups, each selected based on their online submission of a game-changing idea that will shape an industry.

Says Brett Myers, Next Door’s program director: “We figured ‘why not help the next big idea instead of waiting around for it?’”

Each participant chosen will have about five minutes to pitch in front of potential investors. The event will also feature guest speakers throughout the day.

Next Door was designed to be a launching pad for entrepreneurial ideas long before this event.

As Mr. Myers explains, “We’re excited to see more and more startups using Next Door as one of their hubs. We see them brainstorming on our whiteboards, making connections through our events and holding meetings in our conference rooms.”

Passing by the location near Clark and Diversey in East Lakeview, it’s not unusual to see many laptops open and lattes sipped in the ample-sized lounge and café area. Next Door is even looking to add more bands to play in the space this summer.

Of course, there’s customer interaction at Next Door, too. However, it’s more of the financial planning variety than traditional insurance. If visitors so choose, they can meet with State Farm’s Financial Coaches in stylish and portable “pods” that keep the conversation private.

I’ve maintained that this kind of “co-working, community space that also happens to house a business” concept is a very fresh, low-pressure approach to selling financial products. People don’t often make decisions on complex products in one sitting, so why design an environment with the assumption they’re already at that final decision point?

In fact, other traditional settings (i.e., banks) are modifying their environments to be more inviting and multi-functional. In the process, brands like Next Door are learning about the specific needs and challenges of a demographic in their 20’s and 30’s coming through for complimentary financial classes and one-on-one coaching. Undoubtedly that should have an impact on the way the audience is communicated to.

Submissions for the chance to be selected for “Amplify’d” are due by Monday, May 14. And really, with only a few questions to answer on the online application, the process for throwing your hat in the ring to be potentially chosen couldn’t be easier.

Original Post: https://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20120502/BLOGS06/120509942/amplifyd-event-aims-to-help-startups-pitch-to-vcs#ixzz1tuuH0n8F

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Can we kill the “traditional” or “digital” agency labels already?

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 19:24:00 GMT

Agencies of the planet – just so you know, your label as “traditional” or “digital” or “social media” does not give you an inherent advantage of being able to relate better to any client, anywhere, at any time. Ever. It’s a label. Nothing more. And in the current state of the world, it’s an increasingly irrelevant one.

Most people are absorbing traditional media and digital media at once. I think we can agree that a whole lot of people use the Internet and a significant portion of the population is using social media. The fact you choose to concentrate on one of those is perfectly fine and good. Really. But to suggest that the fact that you specialize in those areas in and by itself means you are best at it is blowing smoke up a prospect’s rear end.

I’m talking to you too, specialists in certain types of marketing.

It’s great that you specialize in real estate advertising, for example. But you could still suck at it. Your creative could suck, your client service could suck, your strategy could suck, your media choices could suck and your ability to adapt to digital could suck. Or you could be awesome at all those areas and then some.

Either way, please don’t suggest that the fact you specialize alone makes you so much better than others. It doesn’t – until you prove it correct by making your case with your portfolio, your experience, your client feedback, your results, etc.

It’s shocking to me that anyone would want to stand on a pedestal without telling that story. “We’ve been in _____ marketing for X years so we’re uniquely equipped to understand your business.” Nice try. But I’m not convinced yet and nobody else should be either. Show me more. Tell me more. Best of all, show and tell me how all of your collective knowledge will benefit the challenge in front of me right now at this moment.

The agencies that connect the dots in this way for their prospects are the ones that win. The ones that think their labels alone will go a long way toward closing the deal?

I label that as lazy.

What do you call your agency in terms of what it does? And do your clients understand it? And how much do you rely on that label? Share.

The post Can we kill the “traditional” or “digital” agency labels already? appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

10 things you learn about yourself after 100 blog posts

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 17:44:00 GMT

I had to take a moment to pause and reflect on the first 100 posts of this blog. When I think about what I’ve learned and how those will influence my next 100 posts, 10 things come to mind that may also be helpful for you. I wonder if you’ve felt the same way on some of these points or would add some about your own blogging experiences? If so, let me know about those in the comment section below.

1. Objective is boring.
I’ve learned that there’s little point in being objective because I figure if people want that, they’ll tune into their nightly news. I like giving credit to people who I think have done a good job and calling out people who whiff at brand development. At least I know it’s important to keep it real, no matter what. When I think about blogs that I find interesting, they inject opinion. And if they’re not taking a side, they’re asking questions that provoke thought and continued discussion. I’m striving in the next 100 posts to do more of that.

2. One post can explode the traffic.
Seriously. I awoke some days to find one post have just a little traction and other days it was through the roof. These are the posts that keep generate readership months and months after they’ve been posted, much to my amazement. The takeaway is to look for the commonalities between the posts that are really taking off. Is it because they have a certain format or subject matter or tone?

3. You do not have to post every day. Not even close.
There’s always so much made about frequency. Yes, you have to post consistently, but post when the spirit moves you to write something meaningful , not because someone said you have to post every day. At this point, I’ve tried to say something useful at least twice a week that will benefit readers. That’s the consistency part. Beyond that, when the moment grabs me, I write a post usually in one sitting and never look back. When I’m not feeling it, I don’t force the issue.

4. Don’t try to be Hemingway with every post.
I know, I just said to write something meaningful. And I did mean that. But I sometimes found myself overanalyzing my content quality when I also had to remember to get it out there to express myself on a time-sensitive topic. Again, I think having a loose weekly deadline for yourself can give you the balance of a time boundary without rushing your content out there too prematurely (“I have to comment on that news today!”). Relax. Absorb it. Craft your take thoughtfully. Then stick to your focus of making sure you comment on it within a reasonable timeframe. If something important happens on a Monday, I try to comment on it within the week but not three weeks later when it’s old news.

5. You touch people you never thought you would.
It’s been very cool to see business relationships and opportunities transpire in the last year as a result of this endeavor. Students, CEOs, blog communities, folks inviting me to sneak preview events and conferences and so on. Think you can get these kind of things from spending a bunch on direct mail? Yeah, right. Blogging works. But if you think you can get amazing results after your first 2-3 posts, don’t bother. Patience isn’t just a virtue. It’s mandatory.

6. Subscribers take time to accumulate.
Chris Brogan said it took him 8 years to get 100 subscribers. Knowing who he is and my admiration for him, that fact has really stuck with me and encouraged me. I guess in that context, getting about a 1/3 of that in year one ain’t too shabby. There’s definitely a lot of people visiting and reading, so I can’t complain about them not taking the subscription step too much. I’m sure there are tweaks I’ll explore (without being too gimmicky about it) but when you focus on the content that your potential subscribers want to hear about regularly, that’s far and away the most important thing.

7. E-mail still offers plenty of share-ability.
After Facebook and Twitter, I found a lot of sharing of articles going on via e-mail. So even though e-mail may feel like a communications dinosaur, the fact is it’s not going away for a very long time. Especially among people over 30 years old.

8. Don’t sleep on StumbleUpon.
Nobody talks about this channel as much as Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter or Google Plus. But I’m telling you, on certain days when you get lucky by your post being voted up, it’s a traffic bonanza.

9. Could that long post have been divided into a Part 1 and Part 2? Probably.
I’m wordy. Sometimes more than I’d like to be. And I think if I’d divided some posts in half, I might be at 150 posts or more by now. Not a horrible thing, but considering how much Google likes more and more pages within a site, this might be helpful to consider going forward. Plus I think people have a general threshold of wordage.

10. Offering guest posts is great for variety.
People like Melonie Boone , Steve Congdon and others have contributed wonderful pieces to this blog in the last 100 posts. In fact, I’ve got a couple more in the hopper I need to post. These guest posts have given readers the perspective of people in HR, Operations, Agency New Business and more. It also hopefully helped drive some good traffic to their sites because some still get great readership, like this one from Melonie , which feels good. Plus it helps alleviate the pressure of a post that day, so that certainly doesn’t hurt. Do remember to guide your guest posters so they’re writing within your blog’s theme and audience rather than anything they feel like. If you’re interested in guest posting, hit me up.

#11 (bonus): I am already humbled by the experience.
By words of encouragement, great comments, thoughtful dialogue and actions of sharing this content with others. I hope my first 100 posts have provided you insight and I hope that my next 100 will provide even more so. Your feedback is always more than welcome to help me make this blog better all the time.

The post 10 things you learn about yourself after 100 blog posts appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

What would Burnett, Bernbach and Ogilvy think of social media?

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 18:07:00 GMT

I thought it would be fun to imagine what would happen if the three biggest titans of advertising — Leo Burnett, Bill Bernbach and David Ogilvy — came back to civilization for one week to provide their views on our modern day developments, most notably social media. Their lunch meeting might sound like this:

Bill Bernbach: Gentlemen, great to see you again.

David Ogilvy: And you, old boy. How was everyone’s week in getting reacquainted with the world?

Leo Burnett: Well, things must be going OK over at my old place. They haven’t taken my name off the door. Would any of you care for an apple?

Bernbach: No, but thank you, Leo. I suppose we should get right to what’s on our minds and a shock to our systems, eh?

Ogilvy: Indeed. The Internet. It’s quite a marvel. You can’t ignore it. It’s everywhere. And this social media is consuming everyone’s lives.

Burnett: I saw Facebook and at first, I have to say I wasn’t a big fan. There’s a big banner at the top that you can use to put a picture on, but you can’t do any promotional copy! What’s the point?

Bernbach: And the layout of these channels struck me — you can only customize them so much. I wondered what kind of world people are living in where such limitations are placed on copy and art direction.

Burnett: I didn’t love the fact that we’re not seeing the product benefit clearly with social media either, but . . . I think what I’ve come to accept is that it’s so very different from advertising. I’m actually not sure that some brands or perhaps even some agencies understand that, which is a tragic mistake.

Ogilvy: I’ll tell you, though — what I do appreciate about it is how people are using social media to listen to the audience. The research person in me loves that. Now if we can utilize this new technology to better understand what drives the audience to behave in the way they do and buy the things they buy . . . They’re actually sharing nuggets of insight if we’re just smart enough to listen.

Bernbach: There is one thing that troubles me. I’ve found in this new era that it’s very chic to label advertising as interruption. To the point of where some people are calling it “dead.” I just don’t agree with that assessment — not at all.

Burnett: Agreed. When it’s a lousy ad, you can consider it interruption. We have always started from a position where we are an uninvited guest at their dinner table or in their living rooms trying to earn their trust. When it’s a great ad that makes you laugh, cry, think . . . feel anything, that’s what I call a welcome surprise. A person can look forward to that again and again. If we know how to reach for the stars in what we create, that is.

Ogilvy: People are triggered to hate advertising because so much of it is not very good. But that doesn’t mean it should be eliminated, nor does it mean that you can’t compel the reader to wave a banner in your brand’s favor. Electronic devices to keep advertising out be damned — people will beat a path to your product or service if you know how to speak to them. That held true in our time, and it holds true today.

Bernbach: I do like websites and blogs a bit more for the creative freedom you can have — and at the same time, what brands are able to control. Like anything, it’s got to be an interesting, imaginative and fresh experience. And it’s entirely possible for the person visiting to be immersed in the brand on a website. Some copywriters and graphic designers these days complain about how it’s not the world that it used to be when they worked on traditional ad campaigns, but is there not an opportunity for great copy and great design on the web?

Burnett: Right. I don’t see the difference. Doesn’t a website need exceptional art direction? Doesn’t a blog require outstanding writing? If it’s not a TV spot, doesn’t it need to be an entertaining video to hold the person’s attention?

Ogilvy: Yes. When TV came along, it changed so much about what we did in some ways, but in other ways it didn’t change a thing. The type of media was different, but just as ever, we still needed to make the experience for the person absorbing our advertising into something magical.

Burnett: So you believe social media can be magical, too?

Bernbach: After that first impression that jarred me, I can say I do. The way to artfully tell a story has always required an element of sophistication that speaks to the audience with respect rather than a “buy now” message that hits them over the head. Whether it was Tony the Tiger, a Volkswagen or the man in the Hathaway shirt. We have always had to work so hard to be invited into people’s homes, listened to, accepted and championed. Now we have to work just as hard to be invited into their computers and their social circles. What’s changed, really?

Burnett: True. But there is something special happening. There’s no doubt about it. You know it when you hear the term “revolution” kicked about like it was in our day. That’s exciting. Yet what’s equally exciting to me is the principles we lived by in our time are still relevant today — as you said, storytelling for a brand.

Ogilvy: We still have a little bit of time — is there anything else from today’s era we love?

Burnett: Absolutely. I’ve seen it and can’t get enough of it.

Bernbach: What’s that, Leo?

Burnett: “Mad Men.”
(Originally ran here in Crain’s Chicago Business: https://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20120404/BLOGS06/120409908/what-would-burnett-bernbach-and-ogilvy-think-of-social-media#ixzz1rkxEaX7E )

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You can’t pay for a taco when you ordered the filet mignon.

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 15:45:00 GMT

It sounds hilarious. Ridiculous. Insane. Because the reason so many of us can relate to this funny but painfully true video is that we have heard such things prospective clients have said in order to get out of paying nearly as much money. In addition to these, I have echoes of phrases like “sweat equity,” and “if you do this for me, I know a lot of people…” embedded in my brain.

So if you’re a purchaser of services and believe you’re being slick and savvy in wanting to pay for a taco when you ordered the filet mignon, you’re not. When you’re purposefully trying to screw the other party, that’s crossing a line from good faith negotiation into being less than professional and respectful.

And if you’re a provider of quality services, stand up for yourself. I know you’ve got bills to pay right in front of you. But if you’re striving for better relationships and in turn, greater fulfillment in what you do for a living, you can’t get bullied into someone telling you that you’re worth less.

Because in the end, all you’ll feel is worthless.

The post You can’t pay for a taco when you ordered the filet mignon. appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

Making Your Brand More “Conversational.”

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 21:12:00 GMT

So true.

Why can’t we talk to potential customers as if we were sitting across the table from them?

I believe we can. I believe we have to.

Instead, brands look at their audiences as a set of statistics rather than a one-to-one conversation. And it’s little wonder why they often wind up sounding like they’re talking to a set of statistics. Why? Because there’s a fear that your brand might not sound professional?

First of all, if you don’t make it conversational enough, there’s just as much risk that your brand might sound professional and completely non-captivating. Secondly, you can be professional and relate to the audience at the same time. It’s not impossible. Third, conversational doesn’t necessarily mean so loose that it’s off brand in some instances.

It’s time to err on the side of talking like a human and sounding less like an ad. There’s nothing wrong with ads. Just ones that are dead-ends for making meaningful connections with their ice-cold tone.

The post Making Your Brand More “Conversational.” appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

Don’t Let Content Syndication Make You Lazy.

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 02:07:00 GMT

The other side of content syndication: Does it cause us to cut down on quality interactive time spent on each social media channel?

A couple weeks ago, I had a bonafide Freak Out Moment. One of the apps used to syndicate my blog was having an error and decided to post the latest post – even before it was done – onto the web over and over again . If you were on the receiving end of that noise, I do sincerely apologize for the insanity. Fortunately, if there’s any good that came after I had my meltdown and got the situation under control (hopefully, please Lord) by undoing the app altogether, it was that I had a bit of an epiphany about content syndication.

My epiphany

While I had originated a lot of content from my blog, in my passion for syndication, I was unintentionally neglecting some of those other channels, such as LinkedIn and Twitter, for the venues of discussion they have been for me. Technically I was there, but I wasn’t really there as much as I was distributing stuff there, thanks to syndication of my posts. I was posting, but I’d fallen into a trap of doing the very thing I despise doing: broadcasting in a 1-way format more than 2-way interaction.

As a result, I have not done as much interacting on LinkedIn in Discussion Groups or asked/answered questions in the Q&A forums. I’d maybe done some Retweeting of others on Twitter, but I needed to do more true responding and commenting to those tweets.

The trouble with syndication

Here lies the hidden trouble of syndication if you’re not careful. There’s absolutely nothing inherently wrong with having your blog sync with other channels, so I’m not blaming those tools – the problem is when users get in the habit of clicking off check boxes to sync that content with and forgetting to do anything else on the channels by and large.

You can become so focused on the content under your own roof and how you’re going to push that out to the masses that you forget that each channel deserves as much of its own strategy as possible. What is it that makes this certain audience different? What is it that you’ve found they appreciate most? How will you have a relationship with them that’s different and unique from your other channels?

Without consistently doing this check-up on yourself, you can fall into a pattern of regular publishing – which seems great – without showing others that you know how to converse, absorb, appreciate and advise. You could actually have extraordinary content but totally un-extraordinary people skills within a community.

You need both qualities to do business successfully and build a brand. At least I don’t think you can be nearly as successful being a pure content shoveler vs. responding to others.

So go ahead and syndicate. And of course, make your content as excellent as possible. Just remember to have your commenting skills accompany your content writing skills too.

The post Don’t Let Content Syndication Make You Lazy. appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

Good Things to Declare War On.

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 18:39:00 GMT

A pretty cool mantra by Chris Brogan that I thought I would share with you. You can apply it to many things in life. Your next blog post or ad. Your approach to your personal life. Your next speech. If it’s the conventional status quo, it’s time to declare war on it. Preach on, Mr. Brogan.

War

I’m through with excuses.

I’m through with “good enough.”
I’m through with settling.
I’m through with justification.
I’m through with waste.
I’m through with fitting (and fitting in).
I’m through with nice (for nice’s sake).
I’m through with my assumptions.
I’m through with relying on what’s worked before.
I’m through with mistaking consistency for success.
I’m through with the word “will.”

I declare war. On everything above this line.

I do what I’m capable of doing.
I deliver excellence.
I create what’s next.
I am the echo.
I am the bonus round.
I am the “hard” difficulty setting.
I am the extra 20 pushups.
I am the success story.
I am love.
I am my story told loudly, regardless of the reaction.

It’s war.

The post Good Things to Declare War On. appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

Going In-House Isn’t Always The Cost-Cutting Move You Think.

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 20:50:00 GMT

The post Going In-House Isn’t Always The Cost-Cutting Move You Think. appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

I know you’re attractive media, but I’m just not that into you.

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 15:20:00 GMT

I’ve noticed that generally, the cycle of love for new forms of media often goes like this:

1. New media tool arrives.

2. A few reports suddenly trickle in about the potential of the media tool.

3. Everyone jumps on the bandwagon of those reports, proclaiming it as the best thing since sliced bread.

4. Everyone clamors to be seen as experts and evangelists to their clients about the new media tool (whether or not they actually understand it in reality is debatable).

5. A few reports suddenly trickle in about the negatives of the media tool.

6. Blogs and articles hop on the bandwagon of those reports, saying that maybe the new media tool isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

7. Everyone clamors to become one of the first “I told you so” gurus in order to save face.

8. Everyone is on to looking for the next big thing.

This isn’t a post about whether or not a certain channel does or doesn’t work. It’s that there’s an evaluation of media in general happening that doesn’t work. And in a race to be the coolest/hottest/hippest, some forget that maybe our clients want us to evaluate what’s right for them – new or not new.

The fact is, too many communicators and marketers often set this wild up-and-down “what’s hot, what’s not” roller coaster in motion…when we really don’t have to. How? Pure and simple, as an industry we’re way too overzealous in our attraction to new things without first exploring them, understanding them, seeing how they fit into our client’s overall brand strategy, etc.

When it comes to evaluating The Next Big Thing, as an industry we fall in love too fast, too much and, when things start to sour just a tad, we can’t get out of the relationship fast enough.

The more we rush to proclaim one form of media as a game-changer and then rush back in the other direction to denounce that media, the more we look like wishy-washy practitioners. And that’s not good.

Look, some media choices have good long-term prospects. Some ultimately don’t. Along the way, there are absolutely ZERO forms of media that work for everybody. As we explore these choices, we should never apologize for attempting to understand the new things and how they relate to a client’s brand, whether it was user-generated content yesterday, Twittering today, 3-D digital imagery that allows for hologram interaction (also known as “augmented reality”) tomorrow and whatever else is invented in the near future.

What we should apologize for is blaming the useful tools themselves when the reality is that perhaps – just perhaps – some of us didn’t understand those tools that well to begin with, yet recommended them anyway to clients when we shouldn’t have. Truth be told, having more media tools in the toolbox is a wonderful opportunity for people who understand them and an awful thing for people who don’t understand how they fit into the overall picture (i.e. firms that make the recommendation that social media tools should always be at the center of a media strategy and nothing else matters). Media choices don’t kill brands. People that don’t know how to plan and select the right media choices kill brands (and if their creative sucks, that doesn’t help either).

How can we get off the roller coaster? I can think of a few steps:

1.    Stop acting like a ravenous dog when something new comes out.
It’s new. Remain calm. Study it. Get to know it. Does it fit into the behavioral mechanism of your client’s audience? It’s possible that – gasp – maybe it doesn’t fit after all. If so, the brand’s world will march on.

2.    That new thing is not for everybody.
Again, your client’s audience may fall into this category. And if so….

3.    Just because the new media tool doesn’t apply in certain cases, don’t rush to condemn it as a failure in an effort to make yourself look like a genius.
Please. Everything has its pros and cons. Maybe it’s not a failure but instead a case of where some misinformed people understand the tool better and realize it doesn’t fit into their overall media mix. And that’s really OK. A blanket statement about that medium can be dangerous, such as…

4.    Stop saying “(INSERT MEDIUM HERE) is dead.”
Traditional media’s role is changing but it’s not dead. Knock it off. We’re creators, not killers. I myself was guilty of saying a medium was dead not long ago in a blog post. My mistake because really all that medium did was re-surface in another life form. What’s “dead” to some prospective target audiences may be very much alive for other ones.

5.    With diversification of media, some choices will always work a little better than others.
What clients don’t like to hear is that the only way something works is to try it, considering that exploration is on their dime. But even so, there’s a smart way of exploring results, as in testing selectively and monitoring results. If results are positive, expand the effort. If results are negative, adjust accordingly.

What we’re all searching for, clients and agencies alike, is a better way of connecting with a certain group of human beings. And since they’re human, they’re sophisticated. And since they’re sophisticated and often have a range of changing tastes, we have to remember that exploring new ways to find these connections isn’t brave but a necessity to being relevant in their world. The key is if we can enjoy the new tools responsibly like we would, say, a fine craft beer, wine or liquor and not be so drunk in our love for that particular new media right from the get-go, maybe we won’t end up potentially hurting ourselves and our clients later on.

Still, that new hologram thing is pretty cool. Just kidding.

The post I know you’re attractive media, but I’m just not that into you. appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

5 Cheap Moves Your Brand Can’t Afford

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 14:58:00 GMT

There’s savvy spending and then there’s cutting corners you don’t need to make at the risk of looking shabby in front of others. Avoid these moves to prevent yourself from making a really cheap first impression.

1) The non-company e-mail address

When I see someone with the email address of @aol.com, @gmail.com, @yahoo.com, etc., I have to wonder. It’s perfectly fine to have personal email accounts with something outside of your company name, but it’s not OK in a company email. Do you do this in your spare time? And even if you do, do you want to give that appearance?

No. You don’t. It’s not expensive to get an email with your company name, tagline or some variation. Reserve one and start using it. Now.

2) The off-the-shelf logo

I can appreciate budget-consciousness. But you can differentiate without spending a fortune.

When you buy clip art or off-the-shelf logos from a company, you’re defeating your brand’s ability to stand out before you get out of the gate. It’s important to strive for a look that feels original, not like other brands you’ve seen. You don’t get the attributes of that other brand by association. You look like you wish you were them instead of who you are. Not a good move.

Consider working with a logo designer you can sit down with who has been referred to you from someone you trust. You know – a human being. Not a website that doesn’t understand your goals. When you’re upfront about your budget, you might find some flexibility on their end. Especially if you can be flexible in terms of number of logo options you get.

3) The dime-a-dozen business cards

While your business card may not tell the whole story of you, there’s no reason to go cheap on it. If you give out a card that has a unique texture, shape, embossing and hear them say, “Wow, cool card,” you’re laying the groundwork for a solid first impression – no small thing.

I’ll bet you don’t get that kind of response when you order 5,000 business cards for $50. If you’re getting a whole lot for a little, there’s a reason for it. So you’ll have your cards, which I suppose is better than absolutely nothing, but the opportunity to impress won’t happen. Better to invest more in your business card than less.

4) The static direct mail “explosion”

Oh good! That printer is offering you thousands of direct mail postcards for next to nothing.

But wait.

Are you opening a club or trying to establish a solid personal brand? Before you blanket the world with 5,000 direct mail pieces/flyers, consider this: If it’s a non-personalized piece (or a “static” piece), you may get a response that is less than 1%. So let’s say that takes you down to about 50 pieces that won’t get immediately thrown away. Then let’s say that you chose a broad list of addresses to mail to rather than something targeted around your ideal customer. That takes you down to about 10 pieces.

But among those 10, there are a bunch of variables – timing, budget, competing options and more. All before you’ve taken a first meeting.

This is where the “What have I got to lose?” mentality can take over where numbers and percentages are played, but don’t let it. What you’ve risked is the opportunity to form a first impression that’s customized, such as what printers can now do with personalized printing, even a web address on the piece that sends the recipient to a special landing page. These are the tactics worth spending more on, including list development, which leads us to…

5) The list of “anybodys” in your database

A lot of companies can promise you a list of prospect names for purchase, but be careful. All are not alike. The cheapest might not be offering you the best quality based on your specific criteria, such as a collection of names. How many of those names have been “scrubbed” or updated? And even if they are, are they the right names you’re trying to reach?

Your customer database can be your lifeblood and the less input you have on creating that database, the more you’re leaving to chance. And that’s hampering your efforts early on. When you cut corners by purchasing a list without knowing this information, you’ll not only hurt yourself with a less-than-ideal list, but you’ll also be impacting the things you use that list for.

Wow, the cost of being cheap sure can get expensive, can’t it?

The post 5 Cheap Moves Your Brand Can’t Afford appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

6 Tools Better Than An FAQs Page

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 22:21:00 GMT

Picture that someone has just absorbed your home page and perhaps dove into your other pages. They’re crossing an important point where they’ve gone from ordinary visitor to more interested party. They may not be ready to BUY just yet, but it’s reasonable to expect that they’re moving toward having an initial conversation, right?

They just have a few questions they’d like to have cleared up, perhaps even before that first actual meeting takes place.

Perfect! They can just go to the FAQs page on your site and surely most of those questions if they’re common enough will be addressed, right?

Sure. And that’s the problem.

You can have your website answer the question and watch the lead potentially disappear by thinking about it or YOU can personally address the question by building customer service mechanisms into your site that are more advanced than a page of “Catch All” answers.

A personal answer leads to a conversation.

An FAQs page may go nowhere.

Imagine that you’ve just answered that prospect’s burning question. Now you get one of those cherished moments where the prospect says…

“You know, as long as I have you on the line…”

It’s this follow-up sentence that leads to moving the conversation down the tracks further. And that’s a lot less likely to happen with an FAQ. In that case, the prospect gets the answer they’re looking for, but there’s not much to build upon the answer. Many times in a conversation, thoughts and questions arise that you hadn’t considered before, which leads to more questions.

And in turn, that creates the opportunities for more answers. Customized answers.

Here lies another fallacy of the FAQ: Lack of customization.

You say you’re not a one-size-fits-all company but you’re giving common answers for all. I know, you’re just being helpful. But again, if you want to ensure an experience that helps the prospect get exactly the answer they’re looking for, even if it’s something that another prospect has asked, don’t you want to be sure by answering it yourself? No two conversations are exactly the same. This is a good thing.

Ah, but you may say the FAQs provide all the answers in one place.

Convenient? Sure. But let’s remember something about your website. It’s got to work hard to hook a person in and give you information about that visitor so the visitor converts into a more serious lead opportunity . You know more about them and you know they have interest in learning more about you. They’re no longer a data point. They’re Jim McGillacutty from Fayetteville, Arkansas who has a question about your services. If Jim browses an FAQ and leaves, you’ve gained little. If he opens a chat window to get the answer, you’ve gained tremendously.

But the customer doesn’t want to be sold, right?

So we’re assuming that every personal chat is going to be used as a blatant selling opportunity? I don’t agree. If you’ve trained your customer service team appropriately, the sell is very soft and the advice is very helpful rather than too sales-ish.

Sure, if your people leap into “How many orders would you like of that today?” right after they’ve answered a question, that’s a turn-off.

You can be personal without being pushy.

To help you feel better about leaving the FAQ page off your site, here are 6 mechanisms that I believe work better:

1. Blogging

Sometimes I hear, “Search engines like FAQ pages because they provide a lot of content.”

Does a blog not have the ability to provide a lot of content? Does a blog not have the ability to answer a common question that prospective customers have? Could you not build certain keywords into it so search engines find it?

And if they come across a blog post that answers their question, wouldn’t it seem likely that they’d explore other posts and stay more engaged with the site beyond just one page of answers?

Seems to me that if you had a dozen common questions, you might have a blog post or two. Or 12.

2. Skype / Instant Message Windows

A few months ago, on a client’s behalf, I was evaluating a company that helps set up apps for Facebook contests called Wildfire . I give them props here because they handled my questions exactly the way I would need them to without an FAQ.

See, the problem with FAQs is that you run the risk that the prospect’s “Q” is not on the list. And that leads to frustration. Buh bye. Thanks for playing. Game over, man.

Instead, I was able to chat with one of Wildfire’s customer service reps via text chat in a convenient window on their site. I typed out my stupid question, which led to more stupid questions and I was able to get the app set up without too much difficulty. And I’m a content person, not a developer. Would an FAQ have answered my questions as well? No way.

3. Dedicated Twitter Handle

I’m not talking about your general Twitter account but a Twitter handle that is designed purely to connect and interact in real-time with questions about your business. Taking a cue from the hospitality industry, there are hotels that use Twitter as concierge to inform travelers to that city about reservations, things to do in town, restaurants, bars, concerts, you name it. Your business may be able to apply the same principle to your audience as well.

4. Private Message on Your Facebook Page
This is a feature that Facebook is rolling out and will become more and more prominent – business pages will allow fans to private message that business, which helps alleviate any concern you might have about asking your question out in the open for all to see.

Like Twitter, this provides a place where you can answer your prospect’s question and capitalize on the location they’re already living in, in the social media realm.

5. Google Plus Hangouts
Dell is a big fan of Hangouts for customer service purposes , as it plans to use the video chat service of Google Plus to help multiple users. As G+ continues to gather steam, how great would it be to host regularly scheduled sessions to help a group of people at once with similar questions, again, in real-time.

6. Question Box and Form
I like this avenue least, but it’s still an option that invites conversation – the question box. It’s less advance and less interactive, but it’s better than nothing. This is very, very important – make sure if you’re going to make them articulate their problem in a boxed area on your site that you guarantee when you’re going to respond back to them – definitely within 24 hours and preferably sooner.

Why can’t you do both?

If you must have an FAQ and chat mechanisms on your site, so be it. I would rather you try the best of both worlds than have an FAQ and nothing. The reality is that some have become so comfortable with FAQs and little else that if eliminating such a page makes you that nervous, keep it but make sure you’re building in other avenues that, quite frankly, I hope your prospects pursue before they even feel the need to visit your FAQ page.

Because if you build in the tools you need, they won’t need to visit the FAQs and your brand’s relationship with that person will be better off for it.

The post 6 Tools Better Than An FAQs Page appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

How To Take An Effective Social Media Vacation

Mon, 02 Jan 2012 19:21:00 GMT

Happy 2012 to you all! I’m excited about the possibilities this year brings as I hope you are as well.

Coming out of the vacation period in which many companies took time off for a week, I was thinking about how the last week of the year is probably the least productive one. Even beyond that week, I’m sure you can agree that we should be allowed to take a week or two like that off to recharge the batteries – even those of us heavily entrenched in social media.

Which is why I believe an engineer much smarter than me needs to invent a simple yet effective tool: For everything we do, every social media channel we’re on, there should be an applicable “I’m On Vacation” Button .

That way, our Fans, Followers and Connections would know there’s a reason we’ve gone silent for a little while. And while we’re at it, although I’m not going to be one more person who piles on the social influence measurement tools (i.e. Klout), it would be lovely if these tools factored in the common sense realization that we human beings need to take a break now and then, so we shouldn’t be penalized for doing so. The “I’m On Vacation” Button would allow everything to pause.

I suppose this is where some of my colleagues in social media will say that social media never stops. I agree. So if you can:

1. Invite someone to guest post for you that week .
Guest posts are great to have anyway for getting new perspectives, so what better opportunity to have someone step in than when you’re away?

2. Share the load internally across individuals or departments.
You shouldn’t be the only one in your company who “gets” social media. If you are, start training someone else to step in to handle your responsibilities for the planned and, heaven forbid, the unplanned. Do it now.

3. In my case as someone who handles this on the client’s behalf, provide the client with posts in advance with admin names and passwords for posting on certain days , if you are in a place so remote that it doesn’t have Internet access. Cruise lines aren’t impossible but they can be a challenge at times when you’re floating along the Caribbean.

4. Put mechanisms in place to re-post archived posts during your time off that still have relevance.
Obviously if it’s a post that speaks to really old news (i.e. how this hot new tool called MySpace is surfacing), you wouldn’t want to post it. But if it was a broad enough but useful topic back then, it’s probably still useful today.

Then there is a fifth option that’s more powerful than any of the above:

5. Create content so good you could take a sabbatical and return with
just as much Influence if not more.

Here’s my greater point in regard to stepping away from the computer temporarily and what it means for our overall Influence – we are so wrapped up in measuring the elusive metric of Influence that we must realize it really isn’t a day-to-day or week-to-week thing .

If Lady Gaga takes a week vacation, does she stop being influential? How about Warren Buffett? Jimmy Buffett? Guy Kawasaki? Seth Godin? How about any of the top 500 or so people on Twitter? How about other respected authors and speakers? How about sources that haven’t even formally existed for decades like Led Zeppelin and The Beatles?

Of course not.

They have influence that transcends the mini measurements of percentage points or number of Fans. For them, influence doesn’t die. Because they have pieces of content so impactful that they bridge the gaps of time . Through their books, their speeches, their videos, their songs, their presentations, their photos, their posts.

Wait a minute. If we created so much great content that people could chew on it and appreciate it for at least the week or so we’re in Tahiti (or whatever escape floats your boat), we might not even need a Vacation Button. We would be able to come back and see that it’s not the end of the world because people would be sharing a lot of what we have had to say anyway.

It must be nice to go on vacation now and then while knowing your content is just that worthy of being shared while you’re away from your desk.

Not a bad thing to aspire to, eh?

The post How To Take An Effective Social Media Vacation appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

Is there such a thing as a Chicago ad person?

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 21:48:00 GMT

Lately when I’ve thought of what sort of people Advertising produces, for some reason my mind turns to clothing styles to spot this species in its native habitat. For example, you have the Creative Director, he of the thin glasses, goatee, jeans and blazer. Tends to refer to many things as “crap” and how we don’t do ads like we used to.

Kidding aside (kind of), I went below the surface and got to thinking a lot deeper in asking this question in relation to our environment: How deeply are Advertising people influenced by the city we inhabit and can the work we do be impacted as a result (good or bad)?

It’s an interesting theory. I suppose if cities took on the personas of, well, people, I think this is kind of what it might sound like if they got together for drinks to discuss this very thing. So New York, Miami, L.A. and San Francisco walk into a bar with Chicago in, well, Chicago.

New York: Hey, Chicago. Nice town ya got here. A little version of me.

Chicago: Easy there, NYC. We’ve got some things that top you too. You don’t want to start that pizza debate with me again.

Miami: Do they serve cosmopolitans at this place?

Chicago: No, Miami. They serve really great beer. It’s about time you learned what that tasted like.

New York: So you wanna talk shop here or what?

Chicago: Let’s do it.

L.A. : You know, Chicago, I just can’t figure you out.

Chicago: What do you mean?

L.A.: Well, what are you Advertising-wise? What kind of advertising people do you produce? Like, are you a creative town?

Chicago: Of course I am. Leo Burnett hung his hat here, after all.

San Fran: Yeah, it’s just hard to wrap our arms around you in a neat little succinct way. I mean, I’m a tech client haven in my corner of the map.

L.A.: I’m a whole lot of retail.

New York: You could say I’m the Granddaddy with still the most agencies anywhere so there’s always good stuff cookin’. So I never lack press coverage.

Chicago: Look, fellas. I know I’m kind of hard as an ad town to decipher sometimes. Yes, you guys get a lot of press and sometimes more than me. But if you really want to know what kind of ad people I produce, think about it this way. You can produce one of two kinds of people:

1) The ones who complain or give up. They complain about how they don’t work on something cool. Or they just give up and use “Well, that’s the industry they’re in” as an excuse for doing shoddy work because that’s what they know the client will like. They’re safe. And boring.

2) The ones who love being in a box and actually crave the challenge of producing something awesome when given boundaries. An ad in a trade publication? No problem. A financial client that’s full of restrictions? Bring it. Insurance? Let’s do this.

You know what? Sometimes I produce people who fall into Category #1. But I believe at my very best, I produce even more of Category #2 – Chicago produces some of the toughest Ad people around. We’re tough because we have to be.

New York: Get outta here. Tougher than New York? Ya gotta be kidding.

Chicago: Think about it, NYC. Stay with me on this. We’ve got some industries here that don’t always fit into high glamour. Like CPG. Pharma. Manufacturing. Health Care. These are not industries that are known for being particularly…well…

Miami: Sexy?

Chicago: Sure, Miami. Sexy. They can be more regimented and speak their own language. But nonetheless, they’re awfully important to the American economy, right? Somebody’s got to serve them – and in reality, not just serve them but do great work.

Miami: He’s got a point.

Chicago: It’s just that some people see great work defined by whether it gets a Gold Lions at Cannes or a Clio. No doubt that’s very creative, but I don’t believe it’s the only way you define great work.

San Francisco: Surely you’re not suggesting creativity doesn’t matter.

Chicago: Oh, hell no. If you’re not trying to be creative, you should pack it in and go do something else. What I’m saying is we need to have many different measurements of creativity beyond the “who has the most awards” measurement.

Let me give you an example. I think as a town, I’m as good as anyone when it comes to doing work within a very challenged space. For example, let’s take an industrial client needing a campaign within a trade publication. Not everyone in the world is going to see that campaign, so it doesn’t answer the cute cocktail party question, “Have I seen your work recently?”

Yet there’s a huge opportunity to stand out within the publication.

Why? Because, let’s face it – a lot of the stuff in that pub is going to dry, ordinary and matter-of-fact. Which means all the more of a chance to do some really great brand development.

Some might turn their nose up at that and think they’re above that kind of work. But in Chicago, we don’t do that. And we don’t want to be seen as that.

San Francisco: But doesn’t it frustrate you knowing that some of the industries you mentioned aren’t necessarily in a rush to embrace new directions like social media wholeheartedly?

Chicago: Sure. But they’ll get there. Some industries are slower moving than others, but as a city, I’m producing people who are gently shepherding them into it. And trust me, they’ll get there out of necessity. Take manufacturing, for example. You have some people questioning the viability of social media in upper management, but that’s not necessarily the feeling of those coming up through the ranks. They’re comfortable with these tools. So change is coming in these industries too, even if it’s a bit slower pace.

Again, we can be an “aw shucks, that’s the industry we’re dealing with” kind of town or we can seize the challenge and lead them into technologies that make sense. We can do great work in any category and we’re tough enough to do great stuff anytime.

New York: You know, Chicago, when you put it that way, I’ve got a new respect for the kind of Ad people you produce.

Chicago: Thanks, NYC. Bottom line – if you want to know what makes this town tick, it’s our ability to turn the traditionally “unglamorous” into the appealing and captivating. We’ve got the thicker skin for that kind of challenge.

Or maybe it’s due to the windchill temperatures. Probably a little of both.

What do you guys think? Is there a Chicago kind of ad person? Can the city influence the ad people working in it? Let’s hear from you.

(Special thanks to Steve Congdon, agency new business guru at Thunderclap Consulting Group for letting me re-post this guest post I did for him here)

The post Is there such a thing as a Chicago ad person? appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

You’ll Never Have Enough Time. Thank Goodness.

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 15:43:00 GMT

The post You’ll Never Have Enough Time. Thank Goodness. appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

5 Ways To Avoid Social Media Fatigue

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 16:27:00 GMT

It’s not easy establishing our own personal brands in the world. You have to blog, tweet, connect, and like…let’s face it, it can be rather exhausting to keep up this kind of consistency. No wonder I hear the term “ social media fatigue ” used more often. Yet, if it’s a given we all have to build awareness of ourselves, aren’t we forgetting an opportunity right before us that might help share the burden of producing fresh content?

I’m talking about strategies to pool resources among like-minded people so you promote yourselves even farther. Here are a few great ones:

1) Invite Them to Guest Blog
Coming up with content for a blog all by yourself is tough, no matter how many resources you have to help (thank you, though, Google Reader). So it’s a great relationship builder to invite someone you trust to provide a guest post for you. They’re flattered by it usually and it can be refreshing for your audience to hear viewpoints in a blog from a different voice outside your own. And of course, you can take a temporary break from blogging yourself.

2) Interview Them
Whether a blog, article, podcast or video, you’re enabling someone else to share their story or viewpoints by bringing them into one of the social media tools you’re using. I’d be sure to do some prep work in advance as far as ample questions to keep the conversation flowing, particularly if it’s video or audio content.

3) Build a Twitter List Around Each Other
Twitter Lists are an underutilized tool in my opinion, especially when you have potentially thousands of people to keep track of, that you’re following and following you. Build a list around certain people who have proven to be good referral sources for you so you can easily retweet their best tweets and they can hopefully do the same for you. Those retweets from the group can help get some extra mileage out of your next tweet.

4) Start A LinkedIn Group Based On Interest
Think of the common thread that runs among your group – it doesn’t even have to be strictly business-related – and start up a LinkedIn Group among yourselves. While you might have to be the designated discussion starter, if you have a lively group, these discussions can take on a life of their own. For example, a Chicago Cubs Group has a topic that’s been going strong for months now! That might be an extreme timeframe, but even if you can get the ball rolling with a compelling enough discussion topic to stir conversations for several days, the group keeps the momentum of interactivity going. All the while, who does the credit come back to for originating the discussion? That’s right, You.

5) Co-Present A Webinar or SlideShare Presentation
Why try to sell the same canned speech to the world when you can share the load in creating a new one with a related business? Both of you can then enjoy the credit for the joint presentation, wherever it would be given. If a webinar, your combined prospect audiences may be bigger than if just one of you had been presenting.

When it comes to new content, you just don’t have to always come up with one amazing topic after another by yourself. That leads to social media fatigue and eventual burnout. So join forces by using these opportunities and others like them to bring attention to both your name and someone else’s in the process. If all goes well, it’ll be both of you invited into a buyer’s office, simultaneously too.

The post 5 Ways To Avoid Social Media Fatigue appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

Personal branding friends and I chat on Blog Talk Radio’s “Metropolis”

Fri, 09 Dec 2011 03:22:00 GMT

Deborah Shane, host of "Metropolis"

Yesterday, it was my distinct honor to join my colleagues at the Personal Branding Blog for Deborah Shane’s Blog Talk Radio program, “ Metropolis .” In addition to myself and Deb Shane, the panel included Wendy Brache , Devin Hughes and Elinor Stutz .

If you have about 30 minutes to spare, I think you’ll find it a worthwhile listen as we covered some great ground on personal branding in the digital age. Click on the show’s link above and let me know what you think.

The post Personal branding friends and I chat on Blog Talk Radio’s “Metropolis” appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

The “Word of Mouth” Trap

Mon, 05 Dec 2011 21:02:00 GMT

Let’s get this out of the way: Positive word of mouth is terrific. I can think of nothing more powerful than an instance where one reliable source tells another person how great a product or service is. It’s instant credibility for your brand.

Unfortunately, there are people who don’t know how to make word of mouth all that it could be. Word of mouth can build business but it can also build complacency in people that benefit from it because those same people believe they don’t need to do anything else or that everything they’re doing currently is just fine. But in time, that kind of philosophy can result in decreased market share or worse.

Still, maybe you don’t see the big deal. All is right with your world. Good things are being said about you, customers seem to be consistent…so who needs anything else when word of mouth is pulling in people for you and the numbers are up?

Well, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that you’d rather have more money than less of it. Which is why I offer forth this little scenario about two companies for you.

Company A has 200 customers. Company A provides great service and a great product but does nothing to encourage its customers to put in a good word about Company A to someone else, like a friend or family member. Still, let’s say that every single customer tells 1 other person about how great Company A is. Those people become customers too.

Company A’s year-end total: 400 customers.

Company B has 200 customers as well. They provide great service and a great product. But they implement a referral program that rewards its customers for referring three friends to become qualified customers – Company B offers a pretty good-sized prize for doing so, but then, the return on investment in getting three new customers for every one is well worth it. PLUS for every successful referral, the customer gets a smaller, intermediate prize. PLUS Company B’s program allows each successful referral to count as one entry into a grand prize drawing, which means the more referrals you make, the better your chances to win.

Company B’s year-end total: 600 customers (at least).

I’d say the difference between doubling your customer base and tripling it can be mighty big, wouldn’t you? Everybody’s company is different, but my point is that while both companies shown here use word of mouth, one chose to cultivate its customer relationships off of that word of mouth with far better results than the one that stuck to the status quo and did nothing.

And by the way, the referral program idea is only one potential way of building on what you have.

Remember, word of mouth is a foundation, not the end result. It’s a springboard for even better results to occur because what you have is a happy customer base – however, just because that’s something that many other businesses would be jealous of doesn’t mean you should sit still.

Specifically, think about two things:

1) Where does your audience interact with your brand?

2) What will your reward for making a successful referral be when you get in front of them?

A better reward does not have to equal more money either. It can be a discount off of one of your products or services (perhaps a discount off of a new product or service you’d like to introduce?).

Word of mouth gives you the opportunity to be proactive and make that goodwill work for you even further. Otherwise, there’s only going to be so many words about you passing through so many mouths.

The post The “Word of Mouth” Trap appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

Maybe You Don’t Need a “Tricked-Out” Office.

Mon, 28 Nov 2011 23:30:00 GMT

I’m writing this post from a Starbucks, where I just had a meeting. Tomorrow, I’m having a one-on-one at a Panera. When not at either of those, I can be seen at Caribou Coffee or Einstein Bagels.

Seriously, I should just replace my regular office address with those 4 logos.

I know it’s a cool talking point to have an office with a basketball court, foosball tables, tiki bars (I’ve had that one before) and more. But do we really need it to be creative? I’m not suggesting everything has to be steel and grey in our workspaces. Far from it. I’m just wondering if we need so much excess in order to 1) impress clients and 2) come up with good ideas.

More often than not, I find myself going to their turf, not mine. Or I find us meeting on a neutral turf, like the aforementioned coffee/bagel places. And the more I’m going to their place or a neutral place, the more I’m wondering about the importance of having an office that’s “sick,” “tricked out” or whatever else you want to describe an office beyond belief. It may not matter as much because lately, I’ve noticed business is really becoming an Away Game, not a Home Game.

All of which leads me to put some things in perspective. Seems to me that when they do come to our place, they should see the work, the work, the work. In all its splendor. First and foremost. Yet some agencies are hiding behind it in their toys.

I don’t doubt that fun items aren’t good conversation pieces either. But consider this: If you had to pick one thing they talk about later, do you want them telling their peers about the ultra cool and swanky (whatever item here) in the lobby or the cool campaign/ideas/brainstorming session the agency had with that client?

The former is nice, but the latter is killer.

It’s entirely possible I’m just in a Monday sort of mood but sometimes it feels a little too fluffy for our own good. I’m not talking about small items that show personality here and there. I’m talking about items worth thousands and thousands that are more distracting. A conference table that used to be the wing of a jet plane is cool to look at, but again, do we need it to be successful? I like seeing and sharing pictures of fun office environments as much as the next person because it’s not my money on that overhead and in the back of my mind I’m wondering – what if that money was used on something more practical that people could benefit/learn from?

The ideas we come up with are worth far more. All I’m saying is let’s make those the star more often. That’s what helps build trust. Not the 50 foot lava lamp.

Agree? Disagree? Looking forward to your thoughts either way.

The post Maybe You Don’t Need a “Tricked-Out” Office. appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

You Are Not Your Business Card.

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 14:47:00 GMT

There’s a question we all seem to get in networking situations – “What do you do?” Invariably, we answer with “I’m a (occupation) and I work for (company).”

I started thinking about how this defines so very little about why people find our personal brands memorable. We lead with what’s on our business card. But when people talk about you to others, what will they say?

Having just finished the excellent Guy Kawasaki book, “ Enchantment ,” I’ve realized that likability and trust make for a more compelling position than simply relying on where you work and what you do to bowl people over. Primarily because it shares so little of you as a person.

“He’s a great accountant.”
Not bad, I suppose. But I’ve heard the beginning and end of the whole story.

“The guy oozes talent and niceness from every pore. He made the process of working with him a complete and utter joy.”
Wow. I want to know more. Why was that process so enjoyable? Can I meet him? And by the way, wouldn’t we all want to be described in this way instead?

How does one get to a description like the second option?

A good place to start is to de-business card yourself. I don’t mean actually trashing them all but mentally learning to strip away the contents. All of it. The company. The title. The e-mail address. The phone number. Even the occupation itself.

Imagine all that going out the window. What’s left?

If you find yourself grasping for an answer, don’t feel bad. The first time I thought about this, I called myself a “content marketer” or “brand strategist.” But I knew I was so much more than that. So I became excited by the challenge of conveying myself as a brand and who I envisioned myself to be. This led me to consider the best places to express this personal brand:

Some good places to start:

Your LinkedIn Profile
So many people consider just the summary and work history of LinkedIn. But think about the applications you can add that convey other factors, like what you’re reading (Amazon Reading List), what your interests are (don’t just list the professional ones) and Groups (boards, country clubs, etc.). Assuming you’ve had positive connections, those Recommendations will inevitably help people see the side of you that’s a relationship builder – so don’t be afraid to ask colleagues and clients for them!

Blog
I can’t say enough about how a blog will help you develop an original voice that’s helpful, humble and eager to share content. Building credibility is important, but the reward isn’t in trying to be an all-knowing authority that never gets a response. The reward is in inspiring conversation that grows beyond a post and takes on a life of its own (all the while, the positive attributes of bringing a “community” together are credited back to you).

Twitter
People are feeling you out to see if you’re someone worth following. Here lies an opportunity to prove your thought leadership and show your passions on a topic unique to your industry that extends far outside just “what you do” and “who you work for.” One tool I like to use to add depth and context to my tweets is PeerIndex. The broader my PeerIndex “topic fingerprint,” the more it overlaps nearby related topics and the more I tend to garner interest. For example, if you tweet about a new piece of technology, you may expand your authority by conveying how that technology has implications for media or science rather than commenting purely on whether or not you like it.

YouTube
It takes some practice to get comfortable in front of the camera, but if you do, it can go a long way toward someone visualizing taking a meeting with you. As you do engage in YouTube videos, however, I encourage you not to picture yourself merely as “VP of…” Again, think above and beyond your current status and instead picture yourself as a leader, resource, a helpful ally in a peer’s search to find answers. Think of how transparent you can be on a topic that stirs your passions. Then keep a schedule of when you can consistently record and upload videos.

We’d all like to think we’ll be at an employer that makes us happy for quite some time – and perhaps we will be. But even so, developing your personal brand beyond what your business card says you are enables you to define yourself as something so much more than a title and occupation – a likable, trustworthy personal brand that people can’t get enough of.

(This post originally ran in PersonalBrandingBlog.com )

The post You Are Not Your Business Card. appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

What a Shoplifter Taught Me About Branding

Tue, 25 Oct 2011 15:06:00 GMT

Today’s post is brought to you by guest blogger Rob Jager of Hedgehog Consulting . Rob is an incredibly gifted management consultant and I’ve personally used his services to help channel my agency’s vision into tangible results. I’ll be co-presenting with him on how you can do the same next Thursday the 3rd at the Chicagoland Chamber at 7:45am. The event is free.

I used to work in retail. In retail, it’s no secret people steal. Sometimes it’s the employees; sometimes it’s the customer. It really doesn’t matter, they both taught me something I didn’t know before.

First, most shoplifters have a look or habits they have. Talk to any Asset or Loss Prevention department and they’ll give you a name or a description of each specific person they’re watching for. In fact, they’ll tell you that the thief behaves the same way every time.

Second, I found out that if you approach a shoplifter, greet them, ask if you can help them with anything at all, they will usually dump what they’ve taken because they know you know…and once they’re found out, they want out (the only exceptions being the absolute pros, who will lie to your face and then take some more).

So what does that have to do with branding?

Well, every business attempts to brand itself in some way of another – through logos, slogans, and other visible things. What you don’t see are the things that are internal as well . This is the part we refer to as culture. How the company behaves in varying situations. This is just as much a part of brand as any message a business puts out. When I think of shoplifters, I think of how consistent their habits are between visits to different locations and how it’s their brand. Their style. Their culture.

So I would ask you, what is your brand? Your culture? Your style? If you have employees, as many do, will they behave in as consistent a manner as you? If not, it’s time to give them some stories to help them better understand you. And that’s what a shoplifter taught me about branding.

About The Author:

Rob Jager started Hedgehog Consulting to help business owners get the tools they need to make more money. He has worked in the retail industry for 14 years and three years in the Quick Serve Restaurant industry. His experience in retail and restaurant operations taught him techniques in management, profit and loss accountability, logistics, budgeting and planning, increasing sales, creating consistency in operations, and maximizing profitability.

His accomplishments include turning a losing business into a profitable business within 1 year; a significant feat considering the loss was $1M per year. Other accomplishments include improving work environments, fixing broken systems, assisting in leadership development, and improving overall clarity of business.

Using his MBA, Rob has both the experience and the academic knowledge to understand how to make things happen. Rob is currently working on his PhD to further his knowledge in the area of Leadership and Organizational Change.

The post What a Shoplifter Taught Me About Branding appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

Preventing The Negative Effects of High Employee Turnover

Fri, 21 Oct 2011 15:38:00 GMT

In today’s post, guest blogger Melonie Boone, Co-CEO and Owner of Complete Concepts Consulting (an HR consultancy focused on compliance and management) takes a look at how strong employee retention can have a positive impact on your culture and overall brand strategy.

If your organization is a revolving door, frequently churning employees it makes a negative impact on your reputation, current customers, prospective clients and business partners.

Your company brand goes further than your logo, company colors, and website. Your employees are your brand. Who you are and what you do is encompassed by who you employ. Moreover, the cost associated with high turnover can break the bank.

Nearly 70% of organizations report that staff turnover has a negative financial impact due to the cost of recruiting, hiring, and training a replacement employee and the overtime work of current employees that’s required until the organization can fill the vacant position.

So what can you do to retain your employees to maintain a dominant brand and minimize the costs of high turnover?

It all starts with hiring the right person.

So you have a great team – now, how do you keep them?

It is no secret that happy employees are one of the most important components of your brand strategy. Remember, if you recruit the best person for the job and nurture them as employees. they will stay – creating a powerful brand statement for your organization.

About the Author:

Melonie Boone MBA, MJ, PHR is Co-CEO and Owner of Complete Concepts Consulting ; a HR Consultancy specializing in Human Resources Compliance and Management for small to mid-sized businesses. With over 12 years of experience in Human Resources, Mrs. Boone has held varying positions from administrative to executive leadership. Mrs. Boone possesses advanced education in business management, human resources as well as business and employment law. She is a native of Chicago, HR enthusiast, novice runner and enjoys spending time with her family. To learn more email Mrs. Boone at mboone@completeconceptsconsulting.com.

The post Preventing The Negative Effects of High Employee Turnover appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

Dan is speaking at the Chicagoland Chamber Nov. 3rd!

Mon, 17 Oct 2011 14:57:00 GMT

What are you doing on the morning of Thursday, November 3rd before 9:00am ? If you’re free and near downtown Chicago, I think you’ll walk into work energized and with a fresh perspective on how what you build internally can do a world of good externally in terms of your customer relationships.

I’ll be speaking at the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce along with my colleague, management consultant Rob Jager, on:

Building The Brand Within: How To Deliver Unexpected Surprises For Your Customers

It’s a look at how content marketing can help you position your company as a thought leader in its industry, how to logistically put your people in a position to be better aligned with the company’s true mission, how to identify the best content providers within and what turning employees into brand ambassadors means for team loyalty and a healthier culture. If you’re a small business owner or department leader, I think you’ll get a lot out of our hour spent together.

7:45a.m.: Registration & Networking
8:00a.m.: Presentation
9:00a.m.: Q&A

Location: Chicagoland Chamber, 200 E. Randolph, Suite 2200

Pre-registration for this FREE event is required on the Chicagoland Chamber’s website here:
https://www.chicagolandchamber.org/wdk_cc/events/eventDetails.jsp?cc_event_id=8afbc90d-a2de-473a-9ebc-8a026cd3e6b5

The post Dan is speaking at the Chicagoland Chamber Nov. 3rd! appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

Is There A “Chicago Style” of Business Development?

Mon, 10 Oct 2011 13:51:00 GMT

Note from Dan: Today’s Chicago Brander post is from guest blogger Steve Congdon of Thunderclap Consulting Group . Drawing on the experience of over 200 pitches, Thunderclap helps marketing communications agencies and other professional service firms win more new business. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Steve and find his blog a must-read for anyone seeking a better way to get into more pitches and improve their close ratio. Call him at 773.637.5203. You’ll thank me after a conversation with Steve.

Here are three quick thoughts:

Get belly-to-belly.
No matter what is being sold, conversations lead to understanding, which can lead to sales. In my world, ad agency new business development, going belly to belly could mean exchanging a phone call with an in-person meeting. Or, adding a social event to the pitch process that augments your understanding of “your prospect.” The more you know you know about these people, the more you can understand if you want them as a client and how to make that happen.

Work a bit harder.
For brand stewards, this can mean offering up something free. For business development professionals, it could suggest doing something unexpected, but helpful for your prospect. Like, for instance, writing up an analysis on some competitive activity. Or sending an email past 9p with a relevant link to a cool online story.

Be real.
Another Midwestern trait. For now, let’s define this as being yourself. Can you imagine George Wendt making a stiff, formal presentation – using huge words that tie him up, making both him and his audience uncomfortable?! Nah. It’s just not his brand.

While I honestly think there may be some positive qualities that prospects might be willing to apply to you when you associate yourself with a “Midwest” or Chicago label, these are more likely to affect business success early in the sales game. By that, I mean the label creates perceptions before you even meet someone. Not a bad thing. Certainly nothing “second” about it, (he wrote proudly).

And, of course, you don’t have to be from these here parts to try any of the above. I happen to know people from both coasts who are very nice, despite wanting ketchup on their hot dog.

So what do you think? Is there a “Chicago Style” of business development? And if so, what are those traits?

The post Is There A “Chicago Style” of Business Development? appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

Why You Can’t Give Social Media To An Intern

Thu, 06 Oct 2011 23:48:00 GMT

“Could I just have some college kid do it?”

It’s a question I’ve heard before from small business owners when they consider the prospect of taking on social media. Before I answer that question, let’s do an experiment – and I genuinely don’t mean to sound like a smart-aleck when I say this, but rather to illustrate a point:

I’d like you to give up control of your company.

Not for a day or a week, but the next 3 months.

And I don’t want you to hand control to your VP or COO or CFO but a kid who is still in school who will be interning with you for 3 months.

He’s going to lead client meetings, speak with investors via conference call and interact directly with your prospective customers.

What, you have a problem with that? Sounds preposterous, you say? It makes you more than a little nervous and nauseous?

Of course it does.

And that’s essentially what you’re doing when you let a college kid handle social media for you. Because there are a few roles that put your brand on the front lines of interaction quite like social media. It’s the blessing and, for people who mishandle it, the curse. It’s oh-so-easy easy to take a glance at people who post on Facebook or Twitter and think, “How hard could it be?” The problem with that outlook is that it dwindles social media to an afterthought rather than an integral part of your brand strategy.

In fact, it doesn’t even consider strategy at all. It doesn’t consider the bigger reason and purpose for why you’re doing what you’re doing. It’s saying, “This is what everybody seems to be on these days, so we should be doing it too.” Maybe you should. But not like this.

To be clear, I like interns and think they’re valuable. I’ve managed many and watched them have an impact on the industry I couldn’t be more proud of in writing and in design. They comprise some of the most rewarding relationships I have ever had in this business – and those people know who they are. Yet, when they come into the advertising and marketing world, even they would admit they have been given instruction in a closed environment that, try as it might, can rarely if ever simulate what it means to work in the real world in real time to represent a real company.

In other words, when they enter your environment, they’re a lot like Luke Skywalker the first time he faced Darth Vader without intense training. If you threw them out there and wished them luck from Day 1, you’d be lucky to emerge with just a flesh wound. As time goes on, you teach them the ways of what you’ve learned to impart hopefully some good things by the end of their training – things they never would have learned in the classroom. But that still doesn’t mean they’re ready to handle social media. Why?

The main challenge is that the person who handles social media has to get a great feel for your mission, your culture, your goals, your tone and manner, what can be said, what can’t be said and more. They have to understand the audience they’re interacting with and how that audience has to be respected. They need to be able to monitor and mine for insights that can be communicated to management (after all, I assume you care to know if what you’re doing is working, right?). They need to be a fountain of good content that resonates with the people you want to attract most.

Fulfilling those responsibilities is a very full plate for anyone. It’s next to impossible and downright unfair to someone who is just learning the basics of marketing. It’s not their fault, really. It’s just where they are in life. Of course, if a university isn’t teaching enough about new media, it’s certainly not helping.

It’s a place of experience and understanding that the “face” of social media of your company has to operate from that the intern doesn’t have. This person can come from within your company or can come from the outside world – yes, in all transparency, I do this for people who don’t have the time or internal resources or understanding right away to handle it. But the people who trust me to handle this great responsibility know that I am not a Junior who is in the middle of taking a Marketing class but someone who has a lot of experience in developing and managing the voice of a brand.

Is an outside consultant going to be more expensive than an intern? Yes. But all we’re talking about here is the perception of your brand to the outside world.

Is that really something you want to cut corners on?

The post Why You Can’t Give Social Media To An Intern appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

There’s A Brand Waiting For You In Your Office.

Thu, 08 Sep 2011 19:20:00 GMT

A new Accenture survey of global marketers yielded some results that at first, may not seem that extraordinary. Among them, marketers said the three most important business issues were improving customer retention and loyalty, acquiring new sales and increasing sales to current customers. The survey went on to say that in the coming year, marketes expect to see their marketing budgets flatline or decline.

OK, that’s probably not a shock to hear. But CMOs also expect to see company sales grow in the coming year . Is this a mixed message? Not necessarily. The translation I see is that in order to move forward, marketers will be expected to do more with less. This is not necessarily as bad as it might seem. How?

Think about the most precious internal resource you have to be developed and most of us will arrive at an answer made of flesh and bone, not machine.

Yes, we have to get routinely smarter about what our customers want and using analytics will help with that. But we also have to get smarter about what our employees want – and that’s the side of the equation that I believe gets missed all too often.

If you have ever worked in an environment where employees are an afterthought, you know this. It’s seen in “meet these deliverables or else” career plans that managers don’t like doing and employees dread. It’s career planning as punishment rather than collaboration. Mass layoffs and severance offers are the routine answer to cost cutting rather than brainstorming on what we can do better to show more value or entice greater referrals. Employees see themselves as being there just to do a job – nothing more, nothing less.

The question we must ask is this: We work so hard to brand ourselves to the outside world but how often do we brand ourselves to our own people ? What do they genuinely feel about us and can we be honest with ourselves to hear it? You can’t fake enthusiasm for your own workplace. It’s readily apparent and genuine or you’ll see forced smiles and sarcasm if not outright complaints.

Where does the enthusiasm come from? For one thing, a company that treats its people as investments rather than role fillers. Managers who are passionate about understanding what makes their people tick personally, not just professionally. What do they like to do in their spare time? How can you reward them with more of that thing they love? It’s time to look beyond the annual reviews and raises but instead think about your people’s lives on a regular basis.

This isn’t just touchy feely stuff. In fact, here’s how it can benefit your brand.

Just picture how that enthusiasm can positively affect customer retention and loyalty. Let’s say your customer calls up with a technical question and he’s not happy. Your patient employee takes the time to carefully walk the customer through the question like anyone else, but in the course of helping that person, also learns the person is a New York Jets fan. The person is sent a handwritten thank you card for calling with a Jets hat, wishing his team best of luck on the upcoming season.

Who’s going to forget that? Who’s not going to tell someone else about that? I think you get where I’m going with this. An investment in training that employee might just have led to a better customer service experience and in the larger picture, a tremendous feeling about the brand. Or perhaps they felt such an investment and support from the company for their own personal/professional goals that such a positive desired result came naturally – they’re not just doing their job. They’ve bought into a mantra. A mission. A purpose.

Think about your top 5 competitors. Are their technological differences between you all that different? I’ll wager the answer is no. You’ll invest in technology and so will they.

The true difference is your workforce. Your people with their various talents and skills are the differentiators. They are the people on the front lines who often have to deal with customers face-to-face. And even if they don’t, shouldn’t we treat them as the walking, talking representations of the overall brand they are anyway? After all, they do leave the office and associate with others, you know.

“Yes, but what happens when they leave the company? Won’t our differentiator leave with them?” I expect to hear this a bit. It’s natural for people to come and go. The question is how much and how often they’re leaving. Obviously if half the company walks out the door within a year, you need to take a hard look at your own management practices and communication style.

When it’s hard for them to move on to a new opportunity because the culture is so terrific and tears are shed on all sides, something that is special is happening – really. Because it’s a family-like atmosphere at that point.

Is it possible that we could do more with less by looking inward to the brand in front of our faces that we haven’t developed? And in doing so, could we find our outside sales and customer loyalty rising as a result of our internal investment?

One thing’s for certain. It’s a heck of a great place to start.

What types of initiatives is your company using to build the internal brand? Is it helping result in a better customer service experience, happier employees, etc.? Share if you’re comfortable doing so.

The post There’s A Brand Waiting For You In Your Office. appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

Capturing The Elusive Online/Offline Balance

Tue, 06 Sep 2011 19:41:00 GMT

Over 700 posts have been written about the shocking suicide of social media expert Trey Pennington and I won’t attempt to compete with such beautiful tributes that have already been said by Jay Baer , Mark Schaefer and others (Pennington was a popular South Carolina-based expert on social media and spoke at a variety of conferences to great acclaim – tragically, he took his own life on Sunday in a church parking lot). I’ll just add this thought: As a result of Pennington’s influence, many are writing about the renewed need to reach out and form meaningful offline relationships with people in the business world. They are so absolutely 100% right. But I hope people won’t dismiss the relationships we have online as artificial and without meaning either. True, there will be people that we will connect to on Twitter or Facebook who we will never, ever meet in person. But the key is to strive for balance between the two worlds. It means little to compile 50,000 followers on Twitter without injecting personal interactions into the mix. By the same token, just networking alone has its limitations because it doesn’t make you what John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing describes as a “converged” business. You need a component of being a “wired” business or you will lose out to competitors who are. They will blog, they will post, they will upload videos and they will share. Assuming it all isn’t self-promotional puffery, this sharing of knowledge helps expand on a person’s credibility in ways a business card exchange never could. It means something to walk into a room and have someone recognize you by your blog. It means something to meet someone and have that person research you further and find your insights posted all over the online realm.

I think all of us are challenged in some way to find that online/offline balance. We may never get a perfect 50/50 balance, but it’s worth striving for. Make no mistake – if I have to choose, I’ll side with meeting someone in person and getting to know them over a beer or coffee. Every time. But I’d be cheating myself if the online side went undeveloped.

Of course, on both the offline and online levels, Trey Pennington was a terrific contributor who enriched many lives. He will be missed by people who never even had the opportunity to meet him – me being one of those people.

Besides the many people he impacted and the writings we’ll have to look back on from him, there’s one more positive Trey Pennington has left us. In the immediate aftermath, there is a high volume of discussion online about depression, which Pennington suffered from. I learned through client work earlier this year just how much woefully small federal funding there is on mental illness in the grand scheme of things. This isn’t a political issue but one that affects us all, directly or indirectly. It’s staggering how little there is of the human brain that we understand and need to. I hope part of Trey Pennington’s legacy is that online and offline, because of him we’ll make more of the effort to make mental health part of the ongoing discussion of investing in what matters.

The post Capturing The Elusive Online/Offline Balance appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

3 Times When Social Media Isn’t Right For You.

Thu, 01 Sep 2011 14:39:00 GMT

I’m a gigantic social media fan, but I can never automatically recommend everyone be on social media. True, I could analyze a company from a brand perspective and I’ll invariably recommend social media channels for them. But as I dig deeper, I come to realize that there are a few cases that it’s not right for. Less because it isn’t right for their brand or because their audience isn’t living on any social media channels, more because their internal culture just flat-out isn’t ready for it or isn’t fully behind it when they do decide to go down that path. I’ll give you some examples:

1. “I’m afraid of what people will say about us.”
If your customer service sucks, it’s going to get talked about whether you like it or not. So you might as well create a centralized place where you can funnel these thoughts from customers and respond to them accordingly. The beauty of social media is that it causes you to take a deeper look at your operation and see where there might be cracks in your service offerings. News Flash: We all make mistakes. Still, an overriding culture of fear or lack of understanding of social media tools can lead to overreaction – “Someone said something bad about us! Take down the Facebook Page before the CEO sees it!” Well, maybe you should just sit social media out for a while until you’re prepared to be honest with your organization’s shortcomings. Again, we all have weak points. If you don’t want to address those weak points, there’s an issue there that you’re glossing over. And the more you do ignore it, the more people will talk about that issue online in various places anyway.

2. 100% broadcasting rather than interacting.
I actually wrote a post about how the Cubs and White Sox in their Twitter streams were doing this within a monitored period of 72-hours – broadcasting almost entirely about themselves and not interacting with their fans on Twitter. Seriously, you’re telling me that nobody behind a computer in either of these front offices can ask daily questions of their fans and then respond to those questions? Come on!

The point here is that companies who want to exclusively post without any kind of interaction with their customer and prospect base are essentially just advertising to people. There’s nothing wrong with sharing all the pertinent news of your company with the outside world, but doing that without demonstrating any type of care for understanding their thoughts, wants, needs and questions is defeating the purpose of why they call it SOCIAL media. There are many other options to consider along an advertising or PR route if you want to go that way instead.

3. Expecting it to do everything while you do nothing.
“ Well, I just did some posts. Why isn’t my phone ringing? ”
Because you’re expecting Facebook to run your business instead of you. What phone calls are you making? What events are you attending? What appointments are you setting up? What prospecting are you doing (which you can partly do through social media among other things, by the way)?

If you’re in sales, then be in sales and sell. Social media can shine a light on your authority in wonderful ways but it can’t make up for a complete lack of sales initiative on your part. I’m not the world’s greatest salesperson, but I’d be kidding myself if I thought I didn’t need to press the flesh with real people as opposed to being behind a laptop all day. It’s when they have met me and then gone online to learn more (or perhaps done this in advance of the meeting – even better), that some solid credibility is hopefully built. If you don’t know how to get out there into the world or you’re timid about it, you’re not alone. Lots of people are not natural-born salespeople or networkers, yet strive to get better at it. Just don’t hide behind social media channels and then blame them for the weaknesses you’re not willing to address either.

Honesty. Transparency. Strong internal and external communication. Willingness to admit when things go wrong and a demonstration of what they’re doing to fix them. Taking action instead of merely planning and giving speeches. These are some of the areas that can propel a company forward. It’s the companies that want to appear perfect, robotic and transmitting vs. conversing that probably want to take a long look at themselves before plunging into social media.

Fortunately, I’m finding those kinds of companies that have yet to understand the reality that they employ human beings and not robots are fewer and farther between. Innovation by its very nature is to say that what you did before was not as good as what you are doing today. So if we can be honest that we are getting better than we were before in product/service development, why can’t we be honest about how we’re striving to get better in other areas of the company? I think that’s a positive, rapport-building story waiting to be told with an audience. Not run away from.

How has your culture shifted from a closed loop to a more open style to your benefit? Share it! Or do you see challenges due to your industry that you’re not sure if you’re ready to be “social”? Let’s talk about them here if you’re comfortable sharing.

The post 3 Times When Social Media Isn’t Right For You. appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

What happens when your leader IS your brand?

Fri, 26 Aug 2011 00:00:00 GMT

Most of us have bosses. Some of us have great CEOs. And a very precious few of us have what can only be referred to as a legend – the kind of iconic visionary who is responsible for making the brand what it is today in the eyes of many.

Of course, nobody is immortal. Time ensures we all move on, whether it is due to a new job, retirement or (not to be morbid), expiring. The challenge Apple faces today in the wake of Steve Jobs’ resignation as CEO (but he is staying on as Chairman) is no different than what Chrysler had to face in the post-Iacocca era, Ogilvy had to face without David Ogilvy, Disney without Walt or what Virgin will face when Richard Branson steps away someday. These are imaginative, charismatic, exciting people who not only shaped the foundation of their companies but have had influence far beyond it for managers in all kinds of industries. They are not just people associated with the brand. They ARE the brand.

What do you tell the world when they aren’t around on a daily basis anymore? Do you regret having linked to one person so strongly? Do you pretend it’s business as usual and no big deal?

It’s not a catastrophe as long as you remember a few key fundamentals before, during and after that transition for the good of your brand.

1. You don’t replace genius.
The world knows that. You’re not fooling anyone when you pretend that the person no longer involved in your company is no big deal. “Oh, yeah, he left but we’re humming along.” Give me a break. It’s about saying, “You don’t replace someone like him. He was remarkable. Fortunately, we’re a better positioned company today because of everything he’s done.” You don’t have to say you’re devastated and don’t know how you’re going to go on either. Which leads us to #2.

2. Show what the legacy has brought to your business and culture.
The Chicago Bulls couldn’t replace Michael Jordan. Hockey itself couldn’t replace Wayne Gretzky. But as a testament to their influence, they had disciples and students of their genius and skill. Steve Jobs has had the same and I’m sure Apple will take great steps to show how Jobs’ principles are alive and well even as he pulls back from responsibilities at the company. For example, Jobs was a master of stripping away technical elements that the consumer didn’t necessarily need – I doubt that Apple will suddenly become a company of unwieldy designed products now. They’ll keep this legacy strong if they can continue to show how they produce not just great products but magical feelings that make people salivate over what’s next. Great leaders have great influence and great respect long after they’re gone – how often do we hear architects and city planners in Chicago invoke the name of early 1900’s architect Daniel Burnham in an effort to stay true to his vision of the city today?

But again you ask, “isn’t Steve Jobs the primary person who triggers the emotion behind Apple with every introduction?” Yes. But that leads us to point #3.

3. Terrific leaders don’t leave the skill set cupboard bare when they leave.
If you believe Steve Jobs is a great leader – which I do – you know that he has been preparing his internal team for a moment when he was going to step away for some time now. And if you have ever studied the succession plans of companies that tend to do well in transition, fortune tends to favor those who select leaders from within who have understood the culture for quite some time – not a hard and fast rule, but a trend. In that context, can you imagine anyone better prepared to take on this responsibility than Tim Cook, a man who has been at Apple for over a decade and has already had to step in for Jobs once before? What about the talented people who have an eye not just for technological greatness but artistic beauty in what they create for Apple? Steve Jobs is a great thinker but to say he was the one and only visionary behind the iPad, iPhone or iCloud is doing his team a disservice.

4. Perception is reality. Think about experiences and emotions, not just dollars and cents.
You can talk about dollars, cents and profitability until the cows come home. But there’s an immeasurable quality of captivating customers like the past leader did that should be your goal just as much as earning revenue. People who take their eye off that function of branding and try to say that the company is in an even better place are fooling themselves. And I’m not just speaking externally – what’s the chemistry of your culture post-iconic leader? Is it just as fun of a place to be? If you used to be a magical place to work and have become just a profitable place to work, something is lost. Sure, technology must evolve and ways of doing business must evolve. But the spirit and vision that is the company’s reason for being must be just as inspiring to its people from one leader to the next. If you don’t have that, the promise of what your brand is all about rings a bit more hollow. I don’t think Mr. Cook will make the mistake at the next big Apple event of presenting just about profit and loss instead of trying to excite people for what’s next. I sure hope not.

5. With consistency and focus, you ensure the iconic leader leaves his mark on the brand forever.
None of us may live forever, but the more our successors can use our principles as a guiding force for why they do what they do, the more they honor us. More importantly, they keep the brand strong. If those principles fade because some new CEO from the outside wants to put his own stamp on things and forget all the good things done in the past, well, chances are the company probably loses its shine as well.

Most of us may never know what it’s like to work for a person so iconic that they become synonymous with the brand. But their leaving isn’t the tragedy – forgetting how they made the company great in the first place is.

Can you think of instances of where greatness transpired from one leader to the next? What about stumbles that could have been avoided? Of course, if you have a bold prediction for Apple’s future in the wake of Steve Jobs stepping back, I’d love to hear that too.

The post What happens when your leader IS your brand? appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

SEO trumps social on driving traffic? Not so fast.

Fri, 19 Aug 2011 16:18:00 GMT

A post today in Crain’s comes from an SEOer who claims that SEO is what drives traffic above all else, not social media.

I certainly don’t disagree with him on the power of search engine optimization to be a big traffic driver, but I’ve got at least one case study that says social media can be a primary traffic driver, even over SEO: My own .

First and foremost, let me add one gigantic disclaimer: Everybody’s website and blog is different, with different audiences that behave in various ways. Some people are more searchers and have a great idea of what they’re looking for. Some don’t and stumble upon something they like, then share it with others.

My audience is a little more of the second variety. They find a post of mine, hopefully like it and share it. This isn’t to say my SEO isn’t good because it is. It’s to say that my results from social media have been even better. How so? I’ll list my top traffic drivers over the last 90 days, as thankfully with your help, this blog has continued to go up and up in readership. So for that, I sincerely thank you. Now to the list:

#1 Traffic Driver: Facebook
For me, Facebook is by far the best referrer of traffic to this blog. It’s not even close. It’s like Mark Zuckerberg called up a bunch of fans of mine, put them in a semi-trailer and drove them to my site. Then he turned around and did it again the next day.

Facebook isn’t just tops in referring people to my site but in share-ability of posts.

#2 Traffic Driver: LinkedIn
Again, this is where you need to pay attention to where your audience “hangs out” online. While it seems obvious, I really have to wonder if people factor this into their equation. It’s why I cringe whenever someone says, “You need to be on _____(insert site here)” without ever sitting down with the customer and getting a feel for who their primary target is. Not just demographic stuff but real behavioral targeting. Would you give a potential bride any old wedding dress off the rack without talking to her, getting to know what she likes, understanding what her budget is and taking her measurements before you know what you can recommend? Since many in my audience are businesspeople, it’s no surprise that LinkedIn is a popular place for referring traffic and sharing posts.

It’s right around here that my search engine optimization traffic comes in as a #3 referrer for various terms used. It’s very close with LinkedIn, but L.I. does edge out my traffic from Google slightly. Even so, Facebook crushes it – almost triple the amount of referring for all search engine terms.

Again, before you run into your boss’ office saying, “ we need to be on Facebook and LinkedIn ” remember that this is the way MY audience is behaving. Yours may be completely different and very search engine oriented.

Other strong Traffic Drivers: E-mail and Inbound links

Behind these three but still very valuable to me in terms of traffic are e-mail and inbound links. You know e-mail, that supposedly ancient method that continues to keep on giving. When a company has interest in a post and wants to share it, they may or may not be a company where social media is widely used. So the next best path is, naturally, e-mail. I’ve had many posts shared this way with traffic coming back to the blog. After Facebook, e-mail is the second highest way my posts are shared among others.

Inbound links have been kind to me as well. I’m referring to sites that picked up my posts and linked back to my site in their own posts. If those sites have high traffic themselves, I get high traffic. This is practically tied with e-mail for refer-ability.

Of course, as the tools of social media are always evolving, I’ll be interested to see how Google Plus plays into the mix as I revisit this list over the next month and quarter. I only expect it to gain more traction over time.

The point of sharing all this is simply that in the case I’ve just outlined to you, both social and SEO are working together to play a fundamental role in increasing traffic and sharing for me. The audience data tells me so. To suggest one or the other is always the go-to method for people is a blanket statement that doesn’t often apply. For some, SEO may be #1 and for others, social may be #1. But rare is the case where both shouldn’t be high on your list. They certainly are on mine.

The post SEO trumps social on driving traffic? Not so fast. appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

10 Keys To Maintaining Your Brand’s Soul

Thu, 11 Aug 2011 21:02:00 GMT

The idea of greater sales sounds, well, great. But when you think about expansion, have you considered what the consequences of what the move is going to be on your brand, your culture, your people? Many companies don’t. There’s no reason why sales should be on the opposite side of these considerations, especially when it doesn’t have to be.

With this in mind, I created a checklist that can help you decide if a company sale, increase in hiring, large investment in equipment, new distribution channels and ramping up of production will come at the expense of your brand.

10 Keys To Maintaining Your Brand’s Soul

The post 10 Keys To Maintaining Your Brand’s Soul appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

Agencies and marketers can only afford so many trips down Memory Lane

Tue, 09 Aug 2011 18:49:00 GMT

We in the advertising and marketing business like to reminisce about our own industry as much as anyone. We like to look back on the work of Bernbach, Burnett and Ogilvy in reverence. We talk about the “Think Small” ad, the “We Try Harder” ads for Avis, the Levy’s Jewish Rye ad and the man in the Hathaway shirt. I love those classics too.

But we can’t resurrect efforts that need to lie in the grave where they belong. For example, Michigan-based Domino’s is bringing back The Noid for a week. I know it’s only for a week, but why? Some people have had a passing fascination with one of the world’s weirdest mascots ever, I’ll grant that, but I’m enjoying what Domino’s is doing with their “Oh Yes We Did” effort. They’re taking on their harshest critics, admitting where they screwed up and having people vote on the product (“Rate Tate’s Chicken”) like never before. They’re even putting reviews up in Times Square.

Putting opinions of the food one way or another aside, I believe Domino’s is working harder to improve themselves and appreciate putting themselves out there in the truly interactive environment we’re living in. It’s rare, refreshing and gutsy. More companies should be doing it.

Don’t confuse this with mascots that have stuck around for years. I’m not suggesting that Planter’s should suddenly off Mr. Peanut or Frosted Flakes should fire Tony The Tiger. I’m suggesting that if a long dormant mascot/brand effort went away, maybe there was a good reason for it and we don’t have to bring it back. Maybe we can challenge ourselves to come up with a better idea that applies to the current generation instead of becoming Hollywood and remaking classic movies because we know they were great back in the day.

Advertising has been called a young person’s business. But you know what makes a young person old? It’s not age. It’s mentality . A veteran ages by the word every time they say things like, “ Gosh Ed, do you remember 20 years ago when we worked on the ____ campaign? Those were the days. Somebody needs to do something like that now. Kids today don’t do enough of that kind of work. ” OK. So you do that kind of work. Why not? Because agency politics prevent it? Because the client won’t let you? Please. If you’re going to get fired up and passionate about the work that was done in the 80’s, show at least the same passion if not more for the cool technology and applications that we’re just beginning to see. Begin to understand it and embrace it. Get revved up about QR codes and projections on buildings and Google Plus – not because you’ll necessarily DO that for a brand or yourself but because it represents evolution. And evolution can be as exciting as what’s been done if not more so.

In other words, for every time you re-read “Ogilvy on Advertising” (as I am), make sure you’re absorbing a boatload of books, magazines and blogs speaking to the changes in the way we’re communicating and what lies ahead. Until we find the real thing, that’s as good a Fountain of Youth I know.

The post Agencies and marketers can only afford so many trips down Memory Lane appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

How big will your company get before you get bad?

Sun, 07 Aug 2011 21:51:00 GMT

As he was pondering the idea of expansion many years ago, the late Jay Chiat of southern California ad agency Chiat-Day once thought, “Let’s just see how big we can get before we get bad.” As such, the volume of work increased, the agency grew and although there were still “home runs” of memorable work in the bunch, it could be argued there were fewer of them.

It’s a question that many wonder but few can concretely define – how big can a company be to reach its peak of effectiveness and brand equity before it begins to be tarnished? It’s one that even us in the advertising and marketing business can’t agree on (5 people? 30 people? No more than 100 people?). How much work should we agree to come through the door in order to balance the quality of what we believe in delivering with what we want to achieve in revenue?

It’s something Goose Island has to seriously ask itself in a new era. One of our city’s greatest beers, the popularity of Goose Island has only grown and grown until it was recently sold to, of all companies…Budweiser. Now, anybody who knows a beer “purist” understands that this amounts to a cardinal sin. But then, on top of that startling twist, came news that Goose Island was moving production of its popular 312 line of beer from Chicago…to New York .

There’s nothing wrong with a beer company wanting to sell more beer. And from what I’ve gathered from client experience, it’s certainly not easy being a craft brewer. You want to stay true to the ingredients that make for a better beer, you want to build distribution channels and you want to do right by the loyal fans who chose you over visibly cheaper options. Yet, as you expand, you have to ask yourself at what level does increased production compromise what you’ve built? Is it worth it if it comes at the expense of your brand’s heritage or your most die-hard fans?

In contrast, take the example of the Boston Beer Company , brewers of Sam Adams. Founder Jim Koch brewed his first batch of beer in 1984, debuted it in 1985 and within a year expanded beyond Massachusetts to Connecticut. He would also expand to breweries in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Now you can get Sam Adams in many grocery stores, yet Jim Koch never sold his company to all the big macrobrewers who came calling.

I don’t expect Greg Koch of Stone Brewing Co. (no relation to Jim) to sell to the Big Boys of Beer either. Yet Stone Brewing enjoys large distribution and has grown by 50% every year. He is a self-described “beer geek” and as such found a calling. It’s not his goal to dominate the beer world. And he doesn’t want to sell to the “generic” consumer because he believes those consumers will only choose safe and familiar – even if they know those choices are not the best choices. Could Greg Koch sell to Budweiser, watch Stone get distributed in even more places and see oodles of money roll in? He could. Easily. But it wouldn’t be true to his brand’s heritage and values. And since he is the poster boy for craft brewing, it would be hypocritical to his very core to sell to a giant brewer (just view his keynote at the 2009 Craft Brewers Conference, “ I Am A Craft Brewer “). You’d stand a better chance of seeing Wrigley Field re-named Cardinalville.

Perhaps a sale to Budweiser and production moving out of Chicago doesn’t mean much to the average beer drinker. But considering the company they keep in the craft brewing community, it should’ve mattered more to Goose Island. Founder John Hall says he hopes to return to all brewing to Chicago within a few years with a new plant that’s built here.

While I look forward to that day, let’s hope he hasn’t alienated too many people by then.

What about you? Have you defined a set of values that guide your company so concretely that increased sales and distribution are always on the same page as your brand without compromise? You don’t have to brew beer for a living – regardless of industry, feel free to share them here.

The post How big will your company get before you get bad? appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

First look inside State Farm Next Door : An environment in an innovative State.

Wed, 03 Aug 2011 03:49:00 GMT

As I started to make my way up Diversey Avenue, I heard the clamor of a jazz band playing near Trader Joe’s grocery store. That couldn’t be coming from State Farm, could it? Surprisingly, it was. And already in that moment, I think that maybe, just maybe, I experienced a small piece of what State Farm is striving to do with its new community-based effort, State Farm Next Door.

The "teaser" wall is down. We're going in.

State Farm was nice enough to invite me to a pre-launch party for select guests to come experience Next Door for themselves. I’m happy to say it did not disappoint. It honestly exceeded what I thought I would see. Along the way, I got to sit down with the managers, planners and vendors who showed me what people could expect from Next Door when it officially opens on Thursday, August 11th.

Is it OK if we have fun in here? Cool.
If this was some thinly-veiled approach to selling services, I seriously didn’t feel it. Really. The subtle references to finances and planning are there, but you get the sense that State Farm has been extra careful not to come across as heavy-handed in selling. If it was too pushy, it just would not work. Period. And thankfully, they know it.

“ We’re really making a conscious effort to let people come in, discover Next Door for themselves and make it their own ,” says Stephanie Reynolds, Next Door’s Store Manager. “ Our atmosphere here is all about making it the most creative and collaborative experience possible. It’s not our goal to try to sell. But when they do ask, we want to make consumers more educated and confident about their financial future in a very comfortable space. ”

Like a Good Neighbor, State Farm is There. With a cool lounge area.

Wander over to the cafe for a gourmet espresso.

Some of the features of Next Door include:

And of course, those Pods.
A lot of these design elements are, dare I say, fun and creative. Still, you might be wondering, “OK. But let’s get real. What if I want to get into some sensitive financial stuff? I can’t just discuss this out in the open in a cafe.” State Farm considered that. A financial planner named Adam showed me one of the “Pods” that a planner can take a guest or two into to get more privacy for financial-related chatter. This is probably my favorite feature of the place – these things look right out of the IKEA catalog and are just as functional. You can roll them to different parts of the store if need be.

When you want to chat about finances, step into a Pod with a planner.

“You learn from us. We learn from you. We’re all smarter for it.”
We’re entering a new phase beyond just the “pop-up store” where people can try products for a few days before a temporary store is disassembled. It’s a phase of Store As Audience Research Tool. Maybe you think you’ve seen this before but trust me, you probably haven’t. Very few stores if any have been set up almost exclusively for the purpose of learning and understanding the behaviors of its audience in the way Next Door has.

I’ve heard a lot of questions about ROI and metrics of success for Next Door. So let me just say this – there’s absolutely nothing more important in branding than knowing what your audience is thinking . It’s elusive. It’s shifting. It’s hard to interpret. If it was easy, everyone could do it and I’d have to find another way to make a living. So when you effectively set the stage for that audience to come to you and tell you their thoughts and feelings , you’ve got an invaluable environment worth keeping. Some of us have run focus groups where we’d have to practically bribe people to show up, right? Well, how about someone who voluntarily comes into your environment, has a few questions, winds up signing up for a seminar given by one of your people and returns with 5 of their friends to learn more?

For Brett Myers, a key head at State Farm behind Next Door, this represents months and months of intensive, detailed planning. It’s not a stretch to say every single table lamp, book, piece of glassware and paint color has been obsessively considered prior to entering this space – by the way, do you think about your own environment in reflection of your brand with this kind of detail? Maybe you should.

Strange as it may seem to some marketers in such a research-driven world, it’s not about number of meetings taken in the Pods. It’s not about guests converted into customers. Or number of cups of coffee sold.

It’s about getting consumer feedback and lots of it. It’s about understanding the real fears and questions that a young target has. And it’s about taking all that feedback and reporting it back to State Farm corporate so they can use it for all kinds of initiatives – undoubtedly to ensure that the brand is speaking in a voice these consumers want to hear.

Anybody can rent one of these conference rooms for free. Really.

Partnered with Doejo

To get the cafe portion of Next Door off the ground and give it a feel authentic to the neighborhood, State Farm partnered with Doejo , a digital agency whose founder is behind several independent Lincoln Park/Lakeview coffee shops, including Kickstand and Noble Tree . As Darren Marshall of Doejo explains, Next Door will revolve and evolve around those who enter.

“ We’re very interested once people start coming in because their feedback will help shape this space ,” says Marshall. “ When you think about it, a coffee shop looks and feels different one week to the next because of the people inside it more than anything. It’s the same way here. In some respects, this store may look different 30, 60, 90 days from now and if it does, that will come from what the consumers within it tell us.”

While Doejo will concentrate primarily on the cafe portion of Next Door, their team may very well collaborate with State Farm when necessary on ideas involving the overall environment.

Special thanks to Desiree Fuzak, Stephanie Reynolds, Brett Myers, Darren Marshall and many others on the State Farm Next Door/Doejo team who helped provide me with their insightful thoughts for this post.

The post First look inside State Farm Next Door : An environment in an innovative State. appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

12 service questions that might be worth $400 million to answer.

Fri, 29 Jul 2011 16:43:00 GMT

The relationship and chemistry side of our business is routinely undervalued for its role in how companies make decisions to stay with an agency. Here’s the truth: Yes, companies choose agencies and stay with them because they produce results. But also because…they like them.

Oh, but nobody could ever say that. Everyone has to appear emotionally impartial and objective. Anything otherwise wouldn’t be proper.

Of course we know that’s not true. When a winning agency presents, it’s hard if not impossible to show emotion on the client side. A curl of a smile. A chuckle. A gasp or even a tear. This is what we’re going for. It’s the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Because we know if we elicit that response in you, we have an excellent chance of winning that business because it shows a rapport with you, the immediate audience at hand and ultimately, your target audience.

So why isn’t it just as crucial after we win that business to build these types of positive emotional responses in client service?

In the wake of SC Johnson’s mammoth defection of $400 million in business away from Draft FCB, I believe there’s more to the story here than merely dollars, cents and creative. Here too, it’s about relationships. Internal relationships within the agency that seemed to go haywire, resulting in longtime departures. Around the same time, new blood that came in from the client side. What it sounds like to me from the report in Crain’s is that what occurred was a perfect storm of personalities internally and externally that couldn’t quite mesh. And that makes it very, very challenging for the rest of an agency to overcome.

Relationships matter hugely on the way in and they matter just as much on the way out.

Let’s see. DraftFCB lost its long-time North American President, CFO and Chief of Staff within the last year – rumored to be due to internal politics. So no lack of gigantic transition there. You can put out all the agency memos you want about people seeking new adventures to minimize it, but there’s no mistaking these kinds of changes on one side are huge. And of course, the clients notice. Hello, new Chief Creative Officer.

Then, SC Johnson undergoes a bunch of changes in management too on their side. Big ones at the top. Hello, new Chief Operating Officer.

And it’s not like this new blood comes from within. Much of it came from the outside, which typically means people with their own agendas rather than trying to maintain continuity and cultural status quo. I’m not saying that’s a wrong move, but these types of transitions aren’t always smooth as silk. And when they happen on BOTH sides of the table around the same period of time? Forget about it.

Before we even talk about the quality of brand strategy, creative and results, can you see where this relationship would be behind the 8 Ball?

Let’s say it once and for all. No agency should feel that just because they have a client for 100 years that they should expect to have that client for Year 101 if the business isn’t cared for and nurtured as if it was won yesterday.

With this in mind, here are 12 service questions to ask yourself that are relevant to many in professional services, not just advertising and marketing:
1. Do you keep your contact aware of new trends affecting their industry regularly?
2. Did you talk to them on the phone today (not e-mail – you have a voice. Use it.) ?
3. How many people outside of your daily contact do you know there? How many of those people are outside of the department of your daily contact?
4. Conversely, how many people have they met from your company besides you? Why not?
5. When was the last time you took a tour of your client’s facility and other locations?
6. When was the last time you just simply thanked them for their business?
7. Have they ever referred a piece of business to you from another company? Why not?
8. How many other ways can they reach you besides phone and e-mail? Skype? LinkedIn? Twitter?
9. Do you have regularly scheduled meetings so the both of you put it on your calendars or are you just waiting for them to call you if they need anything?
10. Have they ever invited you to a luncheon/networking event for an association or cause outside of work? Have you done the same for them?
11. Do you understand their goals not only in terms of “ROI in the next 6 months” but what makes them tick personally and professionally? If you offer to take them to a Cubs game, are they going to be put off because they grew up on the South Side and are rabid Sox fans? What music do they like? Do they play golf? Have kids? These aren’t trivial things to know.
12. Outside of what they need for you to provide for them, how well do you understand all the other factors and forces internally that this person needs to navigate to do their job? When you’re not only someone they can confide in but someone they turn to as a person who helps them brainstorm solutions for greater workplace productivity – and that has NOTHING to do with your actual day-to-day job for them – you’ve hit pay dirt.

Some of those may seem like “no brainers” but you would be shocked how many high-ranking management types don’t do them and think they are small in the big picture.

To which my reply is: How many millions would you like to bet on that?

If you have a great example of a way you’ve extended yourself to clients (preferably not just one-time actions, but regular instances that show how you’ve built trust ), let’s hear them in your comments so you can inspire others.

The post 12 service questions that might be worth $400 million to answer. appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

Recognizing ideas made to stick vs. ideas made to stink

Fri, 22 Jul 2011 22:13:00 GMT

As a bookend to my other post this week on who doesn’t belong in the brainstorm room, your mission isn’t done when you have a collection of people who could generate great ideas. You also need to be able to recognize a great idea. I wouldn’t begin to suggest that this is easy nor would I suggest every idea I ever had was great. But I can say that by now, I’ve found there are a certain factors at play that help enhance the chances of building a better idea as well as factors that almost doom ideas from the start.

So let’s talk how to better understand what it is when it’s an idea made to stick and an idea made to stink .

Idea made to stick:
It’s got a whole lot of brother-and-sister concepts in a giant concept family.

In another agency life, a truly great former (and sometimes current) mentor of mine would have me pump out one concept after another to hang on the wall of his office. The ideas would begin to pile up until what was under the wall faded. It became concept wallpaper. And that was a very good thing. If he only had one idea to look at at the end of the day, I imagine John wouldn’t have been too pleased at all. But because he pushed us to deliver higher quantity in order to discover and unearth those nuggets of higher quality, our collective work as a team was considerable. I’m still proud of that work today.

Idea made to stink:
The “let’s throw it against the wall and see what they say” idea.

Sometimes really talented people on paper don’t have the stamina to push themselves beyond something they’re satisfied with. Or they fall in love with their own idea and put the brakes on any more thinking. “Can we just show them this and see what they say?” No. We can’t. Because deep down, you’re not sold on this idea. It’s good but you know it isn’t great. But you don’t want to push for great and that’s too bad. Great involves digging deeper beyond what was easy to come up with. As a college professor once told me about generating better ideas beyond the first ones, “You never worked so hard to tell them something so simple.” You have one or two ideas that you think are good? Maybe they are. Now let’s see more. A lot more. The concept that high quantity and high quality can’t live on the same page is a total bunch of BS. You show me a high quantity of ideas and I’ll bet there are some winners I get pumped about in that mix.

Idea made to stick :
You feel nervous about it. And that’s a good thing.

There’s something about it that gives you at least a little twinge of nervousness – perhaps not on the level of drinking Maalox, but it definitely feels less certain than something that feels safe and comfortable. Why? Because if you’re going to present an idea that someone feels no emotion for, it’s probably a fairly lousy idea. Wait – let me get this straight – you want people to buy into your goods or services with an emotional response but you don’t expect the person in the room approving the work to have an emotional response? Of course you do. Some people aren’t comfortable presenting the one idea that makes them the most nervous by itself and surround it with others that might be “safer.” I understand that thinking because nobody wants to be shot down and have nothing left in reserves. But maybe, just maybe, that idea that makes you nervous yet excitable can be the first one out of the bag to be presented – and if the response is so good, the others might not even need to come out. Personally, I go one step further. My opinion is if I’m rooting against one of my ideas to not be chosen because it doesn’t get me as excited, I shouldn’t be presenting it in the first place.

Idea made to stink:
Crafted primarily for the person approving the work instead of the person buying the end product or service.
You do a preliminary presentation to someone underneath the top person approving the work, because they requested it. They see the idea, their eyes get big and they say, “I just know Carl doesn’t like the font Lucida Grande or feminine colors or shots of people smiling directly into the camera, so we can’t have ideas that involve that.”

Oh boy. Ideas that are created for Carl instead of the 300,000 people buying Carl’s product are not starting off on the right foot. Look, I get politics. I really do. I get that certain things have to be sold persuasively and at times delicately to those approving parties. But I have found in my experience this is where audience research can be solid ammo. It’s not smoke-and-mirrors to get your way. It’s factual stuff that shows you’ve done your homework on the customer. “We know the new brand we’re talking about appears more feminine in design than where we’ve been in the past but our research shows that 86% of our audience are young women between the ages of 18 and 24 years old, so it makes sense to ween ourselves away from those dark greens and greys.”

Think farther than the person putting the rubber stamp of approval on the idea. Their opinion matters, of course. But even beyond any ego involved, most marketers would have to reasonably agree that their customer’s opinion matters even more.

How else can you give your ideas a better chance of rising to the top as an idea made to stick? Try reading The Do-It-Yourself Lobotomy by Tom Monahan . A former agency owner who has crafted many a great idea, I’ve heard this gentleman speak on creative idea generation and his “100mph” way of thinking might be of great benefit for your next brainstorm.

The post Recognizing ideas made to stick vs. ideas made to stink appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

More praise for State Farm Next Door before the doors open

Fri, 22 Jul 2011 14:25:00 GMT

As the State Farm Next Door launch here in Chicago nears, I’ll post other thoughts from around the web here that are relevant. In fact, I thought I’d share this recent blog post from Brains On Fire , a South Carolina-based agency, on Next Door (they were also nice enough to throw some kudos our way here at Chicago Brander in the process). From a strategical standpoint, their post gives some reinforcement to what I’ve heard in many of your comments on my earlier post that the “selling without selling” approach is not just a feel-good method but a sensible and realistic one for this audience when it comes to planning their futures. Enjoy.

The post More praise for State Farm Next Door before the doors open appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

The 3 People Who Never Belong In A Brainstorm Room

Tue, 19 Jul 2011 17:07:00 GMT

“OK, everybody. Come on into the brainstorm room/conference room and let’s talk about (Insert Initiative Here). We’re going to need to generate some ideas.”

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Let’s take that a step back. As it turns out, the process of cultivating ideas isn’t for everybody. It’s not an automatic right based on title. I think what we forget about brainstorms is that we’re so focused on getting to the quality of the idea that we forget that in getting there, there needs to be quantity (this is a separate post in itself). The minute you brainstorm, you’re turning on a faucet at one speed: Fast. When you have these 3 types of people in the room, you’ll slow the pace to a trickle, if not shut it off completely. Let’s meet them, shall we?

Negative Nancy
“No, that’s not going to work.”
“No, they won’t like it because they don’t like the color blue.”
“No, we tried something like that before and they didn’t like it.”

The problem with Negative Nancy is that her presence is like tossing a grenade into the room. Her motivation for saying “no” is in all likelihood the fact that she has no or very few original ideas of her own but she wants to appear relevant to others. It’s not about her title, it’s about a deeper issue. “No” is her insecurity talking. It’s not that she isn’t necessarily a valuable employee, it’s just that brainstorming isn’t her forte. So all you’re doing by having her in the room is inviting the rejection of ideas like Dwight Howard swatting away a basketball. Ideas? Not in your house. Negative Nancy will not only shut down the idea presented but the ensuing effect of her presence will be to shut down a steady stream of ideas.

The “we tried that before” is a particular feature of this person I take issue with because there are many variables that may have worked poorly before that can be corrected now. Maybe it wasn’t the right time or place before. Maybe the idea before didn’t have the right audience to accept it. Maybe the idea before just wasn’t that creative compared to its better looking sibling idea now.

Overthinking Oscar
“Well, if we were to do that, how exactly would that work?”
That’s not important right now. Really. You’re putting the brakes on a phase that is geared to be purely conceptual. And when you do that, the brainstorming process goes from 120 mph to 20 mph and declining fast. It’s amazing how quickly the wind changes in the room. Dwelling on the “how’s it going to actually work” is important at a later point. When? When the brainstorm is pretty much over and you have a collection of concepts, scribbles, ideas, seeds, etc. to study more closely for deeper evaluation.

“Me First” Mel
“Well, I can’t relate to that idea in my own life so it must not be relevant.”
Mel probably isn’t trying to appear this self-centered, he just doesn’t know how to step outside of his own skin to identify what the true audience is facing in their lives. It’s not about YOU. The chances of someone in the brainstorming room actually matching the profile of the audience you’re trying to target is rare. So if you’re a 40-something female in middle management who lives in the western suburbs of Chicago who drives a Mercedes, you need to have more of an open mind if your audience is a 20-something who graduated a couple years ago, unmarried and lives in L.A. The behaviors, tastes and preferences are not going to be the same. And even if you are, no offense, but you’re just one person.

“Oh, horse crud. I think I’m one of these 3 people. Should I not be brainstorming?”
Not yet and don’t despair. There’s an easy way to right the ship. It just requires some self-discipline on your part. When someone comes up with an idea, let it get out there without immediate judgment . Yes, the idea may be stupid, but everyone has them. Stupid ideas can be great springboards to better ideas. You don’t know what small seed of something good may lie within that thought. And if it’s truly that awful, trust the judgment of others in the room to let it pass like a ship in the night. Remember, you still have the phase after the brainstorming is over to reserve judgment on ideas – just not right there in the moment. If you can train yourself to think positively and concentrate on keeping the flow of concepts going without shutting them down, overthinking or asking yourself What Would I Do, I think you’ll be on the path to being a valuable asset that others will enjoy inviting into the brainstorm room every time.

Final thought – if the person who meets one of these criteria above is a manager that you can’t tell to sit it out, all is not lost. What I like to do in these situations is have a designated person announce some brief ground rules (“no bad ideas”) of no more than 2 minutes long EVERY time you brainstorm just to reinforce what should and shouldn’t be said. You’ll better your chances of ensuring the faucet of ideas flows mightily rather than trickles to a few drips.

The post The 3 People Who Never Belong In A Brainstorm Room appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

Every social media cocktail needs a beer chaser.

Mon, 18 Jul 2011 14:50:00 GMT

By now you’ve probably been bombarded with enough posts elsewhere on Google Plus, so you’ll be glad to know this isn’t one more of them. Because what I’m writing about has wider implications than just one tool. It has to do where your entire brand lives in the social media realm.

I’ve come to the conclusion that clearly in terms of social media we should all be on TumblrGoogTwitBookTube.

Sorry for the confusion, but I think others with their behaviors and proclamations of late are just as confusing.

I’ve had it with those who feel another social media tool has to die so that another may live. Maybe it’s the rush to be proclaimed as a prophet of some sort, but it’s bogus. Actually, to be more accurate, it’s dangerous brand strategy and it risks burning the relationships you’ve cultivated.

I really have to marvel at people who are writing about how they are leaving their current outposts because something else has come along that’s far superior.

“We were on Facebook but we’re moving everything to Tumblr.”
“We were on WordPress but we’re going over to GooglePlus. Follow us there!”

Dumb, dumb, dumb.

They’re missing the point of how their own fans and followers use social media, which is to say that we almost never put all our energy toward one channel.

We have a hub and then, many times, we have at least a secondary channel. The most common example I’ve witnessed of this is Facebook for personal relationships, LinkedIn for business relationships. Or LinkedIn/Facebook as primary hub, Twitter as a 2 ^nd , lesser visited destination.

It’s kind of like a favorite of restaurant of mine that serves a Bloody Mary with a beer chaser of Miller Lite during Sunday brunch – every good primary hub deserves a secondary accompaniment. Much like the primary and secondary ways we consume social media. Or “Hubs” and “Outposts.”

It’s downright rare for us to spend 100% of our time in one place and that’s more than OK. Yet, every single time a new tool comes along like Google Plus, it has to be the Killer of something else. It was the Facebook Killer, the Twitter Killer and the LinkedIn Killer.

Nope. I’m not buying it.

Why can’t we research, experiment and explore? I spend the majority of my time on WordPress, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Not only because it’s what I’m comfortable with at the moment but more importantly, it’s where the people I have relationships with and potential clients are spending their time online. With Google Plus being new, I’ve done my due diligence to check it out because like many other people, I was curious. If enough of my audience is there – and stays there – I’ll deepen my commitment (I wouldn’t get hung up on the 10 million people who signed up for it until we see the staying power months from now).

I remember a much simpler time when we only debated in absolutes between “digital” media and “traditional” media.

Which was seriously only a couple years ago.

Now, just as social media is gaining credibility in the boardroom as a viable option for marketing budgets – yes, I believe we’re moving past that point – we’re going to complicate matters and confuse them by saying, “No, don’t go here anymore, you want to put all your energy over here.”

“But I thought you said Facebook was equivalent to the 3 ^rd or 4 ^th largest country in the world.”

“Yeah, I did, but it’s on its way out. You want to be on Tumblr. You can do so much more with it.”

“But our audience is in their 40’s. Isn’t that a tool more popular with Gen Y right now?”

“It’s OK. They’ll come around to it.”

Sure. But they’re not all there right now . So it’s more sensible to dip my toes in that water before jumping in with reckless abandon.

This may sound like you shouldn’t be flexible, but I’m actually championing for greater mobility.

Far before this thing called the Internet and social media came along, advertising agencies who had intelligent planners knew that their audience probably watched TV, listened to the radio and read certain magazines. They didn’t tell companies to put 100% of their marketing budgets in one medium.

We shouldn’t be telling people that now.

What I’m hearing is the equivalent of someone not only telling a marketer to put all their money in TV, but all their money in one channel like ABC. That doesn’t sound like good advice, right?

Well, telling a brand to go “all in” on one social media channel is probably along the same lines of competence.

We should be telling people to diversify and plan based on what we have gathered about the way their audience has, is and will behave. If social media is a component of their brand strategy – which it is – we should be treating it as such by diversifying our percentages of time spent on various channels rather than flipping off the light switch while people are still in the room talking.

I’m not suggesting that you should spend time on a dying channel or a channel that’s not reflective of your audience. That would be silly. What I am suggesting is that you should add social media channels rather than burn bridges. We can still be pioneers and sherpas of social media while being true to how our brand’s followers are living today. Then, if and when it appears that either the channel is on its way down for the count or that your audience is steadily trickling away from that channel, you make a move to change your commitment to it. From “primary” to “secondary” to “non-existent” if you have to.

So it’s OK to suggest when appropriate that we should take a hard look at spending time on a new channel because that’s where we believe based on research and conversations that this is where our audience will be headed. We’d be doing a disservice not to communicate this.

It’s just that when you build up a following on any medium, it’s something that’s not only taken time on your part but is a serious investment made on the people who have chosen to follow you that should never be taken for granted.

Sometimes I wonder if brands and gurus remember that before they torch the old place.

The post Every social media cocktail needs a beer chaser. appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

State Farm becoming a better neighbor with Next Door concept

Mon, 11 Jul 2011 16:16:00 GMT

As someone who worked on the State Farm account for a few years, I view the company’s latest concept with more than a casual interest. The company with the familiar “Like a good neighbor…” jingle is about to launch an entirely new retail idea smack dab in the middle of my neighborhood in Lakeview. And at least at a first glance, I think they’re on to something good that more in the insurance industry might want to take a closer look at doing themselves.

State Farm Next Door opens August 1st and the concept is a more open, casual community space that offers free Wi-Fi and coffee (via its Next Door Cafe) as well as personalized coaching/small group classes on financial matters that range from paying off student loans to learning how to budget your finances.

The "Good Neighbor" with a new look.

This may not seem like a huge departure from the typical agent office, but it is. Here’s why. For a long time, State Farm talked about the fact that their agents live in the same community as their customers. Which is normal. But even though you can continuously say, “ We live where you live ,” there’s nothing quite like actually demonstrating it visibly by being more of a central hub.

Plus, there will be no actual insurance sold at State Farm Next Door so they aren’t cannibalizing their own agents’ efforts by selling policies here. There will be financial consultants and all the services at Next Door are free. Personally, I think the latter part of that sentence is important for bringing down some barriers among younger people who would normally walk on by because they don’t see the point in planning when they don’t even have the funds to pay for ongoing classes.

Stepping out of the “Auto/Home/Life” rate rut.

Let’s be honest. You first walk into or call State Farm, Allstate, Farmer’s, etc. because you have a need for auto, home or life insurance. You need to get covered, you compare rates, you buy. You don’t like your rate after a while? You look around, you compare again, you buy.

Fighting a branding battle based on rates doesn’t benefit State Farm. I never thought it has. It’s territory that Geico and Progressive have owned quite well for years. Even when State Farm talks about the dangers of “cut-rate car insurance,” they’re still planting the seed of shopping based on rates and playing into the hands of their competitors.

That’s why, even though the newest ad work for State Farm is entertaining, that’s not necessarily what I see pulling people in. I see the Next Door concept having real upside by broadening out from buckets of insurance sold from an agent behind a desk into more generalized classes on finance and budgeting for 20-somethings and 30-somethings in the neighborhood who needed that guidance but couldn’t find it up to this point. You don’t have to walk into Next Door with an intent to buy. You walk in with an intent to learn (sorry, I don’t think I’ll walk in with an intent to just have a cup of coffee when there’s Starbucks and Caribou close by, but I appreciate the offer).

No hard selling, new look

In a way, State Farm’s Next Door feels a lot like smart social media itself – not a hard sell but a place to inform a community. And possibly learn from it along the way. I also like the fact that State Farm has the guts to do a true departure design-wise (different logo, wood background) for this sub-brand of Next Door, because in this case anything that looks too close to the familiar auto/home/life color palette would be a bit of a turn-off. A bright red building would scream “State Farm,” but it wouldn’t say “come in with your financial questions or just to hang out.” The location doesn’t hurt being steps away from Trader Joe’s and the Diversey/Clark/Broadway intersection.

Some may think the idea is a stretch, but I disagree. I think for a brand that’s been around for as long as State Farm, it’s a stretch within their brand that makes sense and might even be overdue. Even more so than insurance and agents, State Farm is supposed to be about, well, being a Good Neighbor with warm, friendly guidance. I think the Next Door concept is authentic and true to that ideal. Will that translate into a steady flow of interested customers? Well, we don’t have to wait until the doors open. Let’s hear from you:

Does this type of cafe concept with free classes, coffee, Wi-Fi and “no strings attached” appeal to you from a financial services and insurance company?

The post State Farm becoming a better neighbor with Next Door concept appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

The Google Gap: Useful? Yes. Emotional Pull? Well…

Fri, 01 Jul 2011 17:21:00 GMT

A rather stunning irony occurred to me as I was thinking about the latest tool Google is introducing, Google Plus.

For all the tools I use from Google, I don’t believe I ever got extraordinarily excited about using them before or during the time I’ve actually used them.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m a fan of certain tools and highly recommend them. In particular, I regularly use Google Calendar, Gmail, Google Reader and Google Alerts. I’d even describe them to others as “great.”

So what’s the problem? The problem is despite the fact that Google delivers a highly efficient, highly productive group of tools for me, none of these tools have stirred the senses with a “got to have it now” factor . And this wouldn’t be such a big deal if Google weren’t aiming to stand toe-to-toe with the likes of Facebook to be our all-everything place for connections, searching and relationships.

Say what you want about privacy issues, but Facebook owns a great deal of emotional investment from people. It’s the place where their family and friends commonly are when it comes to online community interaction, if not their business associates too. The technology to keep and enhance those connections is important, but technology is almost secondary to why people are there and stay there. This emotion is not to be underestimated.

Take another company, like Apple. Apple has the “got to have it now” factor in spades. It’s safe to say that for a large number of people like you, there’s been at least one Apple product released in the last 10 years that you really, really wanted….NOW. It’s why people had to have the iPod, stood in line for the iPhone and they’re salivating over the iCloud. And if you didn’t have it, you felt left behind. Even with the one product that met a bit more skepticism at first, the iPad, there’s little question now that people who bought into it love what it can do on a personal or business level.

And there it is – the “L” word. Love. There are many companies that produce useful, efficient, productive products that people buy and even keep buying…but don’t love them. This is coveted territory that not everybody can own. Dare I say that Google has never produced anything that’s, well, FUN. It’s never ENTERTAINED. Absolutely, it’s helped me get the job done, find what I’m looking for and keep me organized. But it’s never brought a lasting smile to my face.

Love isn’t always attained by adding more to an existing solution but actually stripping away what isn’t needed. One of my favorite examples here is 37 Signals with their Basecamp product for project management. There’s more emotional pull here not because it’s complicated but because it’s more simple than other tools with just enough to give me everything I need, nothing that I don’t. It doesn’t hurt that 37 Signals is great at customer service and exceedingly quick to inform its customers of enhancements or technical difficulties they’re working on.

And by the way, I didn’t have to wait for an invite to use their software.

Therefore, the Google Gap has nothing to do with technology but an emotional pull. A legion of fans that are passionate about spreading the word to others unsolicited because that product enhances their life just SO MUCH that they want the people they care about to experience that feeling too.

Never had that situation with Google. Never had a “Oh wow, you’ve got to try Gmail” moment. Instead, the exchange goes like this:

Them: “What’s your favorite calendar program?”
Me: “Google Calendar. It’s great.”

That’s not love – it may sound like it at first glance, but it’s not. That’s a positive recommendation that wouldn’t have come unless it was initiated by someone else. To close the Google Gap and be seen in a different light, Google Plus and future products from Google need to be more than just useful and efficient. We also don’t need versions that seem better in appearance but in practicality are more complicated to use. They have to bring remarkable new categories of technology we haven’t used yet or dramatically strip away the complications of technology we’re using to the point of where it almost feels like a brand new category.

By virtue of his product line, Steve Jobs enjoys this emotional capital. By virtue of the relationships he has ownership over, so does Mark Zuckerberg. If Larry Page wants to stand on the platform with these gentlemen, this is the challenge before him to shape a new chapter of the Google era.

The post The Google Gap: Useful? Yes. Emotional Pull? Well… appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

3 reasons why we need journalists more than ever

Wed, 22 Jun 2011 22:52:00 GMT

It’s apparent to me that the very fact that some people wondering if journalism is “dead” in light of the decline of newspapers that there’s a whole lot here that’s getting overblown.

3 reasons why journalists still deserve a seat at the table in the era of new media:

1. All of us can’t repost stuff we find on the web at once and call it “news.”
We need people who take that aggregated flow of endless info – some of it useful and some of it not – and give it greater context. They help us decipher how that information fits together in a world where we’re getting a whole lot more information, not less. Some innovators feel that the world is a better place when info is compiled on top of itself in one infinite stream for us to figure out what we want to do with it. I disagree. Info is good, but we could use better ways to organize, compartmentalize and understand that info. Are we really there yet?

2. If you hear a thousand voices on one topic, it can sound a hell of a lot like noise. You need some trusted authorities on that topic to help provide you with opinions that make sense. It’s not like we’re all experts in every subject. We need reliable sources to help us understand the issues among the flow of information that is often entirely too biased or just plain wrong. Oh, I know some will bring their own bias – but there have to be thought leaders/influencers on all sides that rise to the top of the conversation. It may be a free country where anyone can speak their mind, but it’s good to have these people to help us frame the issues at hand and the corresponding sides to those issues. That way, we aren’t all just talking or – please no – shouting at once.

3. Compiling content is not inherently wrong. But there’s still much more of a need for original content.
To me, it’s not he who has the most content who wins. It’s he who has the most relevant content. So of course we’re going to re-post, retweet, share, etc. But people who merely do this and only this at high velocity each day aren’t content sharing. They’re content shoveling. It’s like my dog who digs a hole at the beach – when she kicks her back legs in the air, a lot of sand goes flying in all directions aimlessly. Well, when someone just repeatedly shares without creating or commenting, there’s just a lot of content flying around without direction. Some will argue that some people are just more natural-born “sharers” and it’s not in their nature to comment or create. I get that to a certain degree. But the balance of those who create and comment is woefully unbalanced on some channels compared to those who share, particularly on Twitter. Sharing is great, but it’s the conversation and dialogue that helps define our stances online. Better to share than not share, but I wonder if some of us can’t come out of our writing/commenting shell to help balance out the audience just a bit better.

For example, when news such as the recent uprisings in Egypt surfaced and we heard voices from inside the revolution via Twitter, I was fascinated. But I couldn’t have understood it all from a steady diet of Tweets either. I needed to hear from an inside voice like Wael Ghonim’s and an outside voice like Anderson Cooper’s . One brought authenticity, the other brought context. Just because we had a new and exciting stream of information to witness, it’s ludicrous to suggest we didn’t need CNN there and that they were “beat” to the story. Their role changed. The need for them to be there didn’t.

Final thought: It’s OK to share, retweet and comment. More than OK. It’s what helps the engine of social media go, after all. But we need more influential creators of content to rise up too. As well as people who provide valuable commentary on existing content. Both of which, by the way, are probably opportunities your brand isn’t seizing enough, but that’s a post for another day.

The post 3 reasons why we need journalists more than ever appeared first on Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing .

Selling to people who couldn’t care less (at first)

Mon, 24 Jan 2011 17:54:00 GMT

“Hi Mr. Decision-Maker at XYZ Company. This is (your name) at (your company). We’ve been in business since (year) and people love us for our (product/service attribute).”

Click. In case you’re wondering that would be the sound of Mr. Decision-Maker stopping and deleting your voicemail message.

Admittedly, for a long time I sounded kind of like this when I approached marketing decision-makers. Until I realized that they have zero time to talk, they view unsolicited voicemails and e-mails as an intrusion and that’s IF you can get past the gatekeeper secretary.

In other words, they are not waiting on pins and needles for what you’re selling. But I’ve come to learn that with careful study of listening for potential customer pains, you can briefly but firmly whet the appetite of a person to continue the conversation with you. How did I learn this? Primarily from a woman named Jill Konrath , author of “Selling to Big Companies” and the new “SNAP Selling.” She taught me that whether it’s writing a letter, leaving a message or crafting an e-mail, you don’t have to tell your entire story to get someone to take interest in you. You shouldn’t. Instead, she shows you how you can convey an understanding of that prospect’s situation here and now, ultimately leading them back to what you have to offer.

In fact, I learned that Jill Konrath will be coming to the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce on February 10th at 7:00am (speaking at 8:00am). If you have a spare couple of hours that morning, I highly recommend you check it out and pick up her books. If you follow her advice, you’re sure to open a few more doors as the economy improves.

To register for the event, visit the Chicagoland Chamber’s website at chicagolandchamber.org and click on the Event Calendar for February 10th.

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