Month: January 2016

Part 3- Becoming the Real Deal

A few years back, my daughter worked in visual merchandising at a big box department store in Chicago. I will leave the store unnamed, although I am quite sure you have been there or at one of its affiliates. I asked her one day, out of curiosity, how a big company goes about communicating its mission internally to its employees. “Quite unsuccessfully in our case,” she answered. “Our mission statement glows from every computer screen, but the employees just make fun of it.” Despite the continual glowing of the visual reminder, the mission failed to glow from the hearts of anyone whose task it was to make it come true.

And there you have it.

The biggest problem in branding is not the cost, although it does cost something. It is not the time, although it requires much thinking. It is not the internal management required to make the brand images consistent, as important as consistency is.

The biggest problem in branding is making Brand happen.

It is obvious that it is just as hard for the large company to carry out its intentions as it is for the small firm. Wherever the mission and vision of a company meets or exceeds the expectation of the customer, you create magic. But wherever mission and vision depart from the actual customer experience, you have the antithesis to business at best, and potential toxicity at worst.

Entrepreneurs start off with good intentions. Many understand the power of brand, and craft a well-defined mission, vision, culture, and story. But as they grow they tend to pay more attention to sales quotas than they do the customer. In doing so, they bypass the heart of marketing, and the pulse weakens.

What is this like? Let’s imagine a man named Jim takes on one of those reality show challenges to win a large sum of money. All he has to do is find a romantic muse, get married, and inspire his partner to say that he is the perfect husband at the end of one year. If he is successful, he will win a million dollars. But, if she does not claim he is the best husband ever? He will have to pay back every expense plus finance charges. If he takes the goal seriously, Jim will work hard to keep his muse amused. He will go out of his way to be everything she needs him to be, albeit with dollar signs in his eyes. He would study the behavior of good husbands. He would study his partner’s behavior, and make long lists of her likes and dislikes. He would check his calendar to determine all the right dates to send flowers. He would plan breakfasts in bed. He would plan to say the all the right things, and do all the right things, at all the right times.

But, six months in, his partner begins to feel as if something is up. She may not know anything about the contract, but senses something is off-kilter. Jim is a little too perfect. He has no sparkle in his eye, and no spontaneity–his words are a bit too scripted. She can’t quite put her finger on it, but the relationship feels a bit, well . . . . cheesy. Of course. It is cheese. It is not a relationship. It is all about Jim.

This story may seem a far-fetched example, yet many businesses do marketing in the exact same way. In the reality show of business, this exact scenario has played itself out so many times that consumers are now suspect of anything that smacks of an advertising overture. When a company only seeks a sales quota, and sees its customers only as a package of behaviors–as someone to convince to ‘click here’–it will not be long before that customer describes the relationship as plastic. Customers want real passion. They would rather experience serendipity than scripts. They can better endure anything–even a screw up–than a fake company.

There are a thousand ways to build real relationships with your customers. Knowing what your customers need and want. Staying true to your core values. Providing real value that you know is your best work. Setting up systems so you can deliver with consistency. Doing what you say you are going to do. Making it easy to do business with you. Respecting the customer as intelligent and worthy of your time. Being genuinely excited about helping them achieve their goals. By ensuring your customer has experienced your company in the way you planned for them to experience it. And these are just a skim from the top. 

A wise entrepreneur will craft their customer’s experience from start to finish. But business is not theater. It cannot be an illusion of real relationship to obtain a sale. It must be the real deal.

Are you looking to create real relationships with your customers? You cannot fake it. Truth will prevail. Experience is hard to argue with.  How do you help your customers best?

Put your customer first, and you will become the Real Deal.

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Why do we at etc!graphics inc, a graphic design company, care about your business strategies?  Because no matter how beautiful we make your visuals, your graphics will never make more sense than the clarity of your own vision. The clearer your target, the more lucid your marketing will be, and the better connection you will create with your visual graphics. We want to help you become the best you can be. Join us all this month as we share ways to help your small business sustain and grow in a crowded marketplace. Etc!Graphics is devoted to helping you, the small business owner, think like a marketer. 

Part 2- Stepping Up

Does a brand make a company valuable? Or does a valuable company make a brand? If you take a look at Forbes List of the Most Valuable Brands, it is obvious that 100% of these entities have made a major investment in design. Each entity is a carefully coiffed company–with a look designed to turn heads and to create an experience.

“Of course,” you may say. “They are large enough to have the money to invest in their branding in a major way.”

But how did they get the money to invest in the company in a major way? Did design increase trust to impact their bottom line? Or was the company trustworthy from the start? It is certainly a chicken and egg question. But whether design is causation or simple correlation, I challenge anyone to make it to the top of such a list without it. If Coca-Cola needs design to get to the top, then it would be quite presumptuous to push the design budget to the back burner for any size company.

One thing is certainly true: a company’s design reflects its management and vice versa. Herein lies the trouble. It is common for startups to begin business by investing in everything but design and branding. This leaves a fabulous product without representation. Those who pull back little realize the peril of poor design. A business that is sending the wrong message–or worse yet, no message at all–is no business at all.

Why do entrepreneurs withhold the branding budget? Many misconceptions exist:

My company does not need design–we are too small. This belief is common among entrepreneurs. Planning your identity and business design is like laying the philosophical cornerstone of your business. It is like breathing life into a body, and giving it a soul. Before putting pencil to paper and beginning any design, an experienced graphic designer will ask many questions. They will want to know what you want to do, who you want to do it for, and why you need to do it. Clear answers to these questions are the bedrock of your marketing plan. Serious marketing research backs any good design. It only looks simple. Without clearly identifying these answers, you have no base from which to launch your efforts, and no hoop to confirm success.  No business is ever too small to invest in this kind of thinking.

Professional design is too costly. What if you have a fabulous product, but your design says ho-hum? Think how costly such misrepresentation could be! Count up the sales lost to miscommunication and misunderstanding! Next, think of how costly it will be to print several campaigns only to find out they connect with no one. It would be easier to roll down your window on the way home from work, and just throw your money out. Doing so would save you a lot of time too. There is nothing more costly than poor design–or no design at all.

Design will make me look bigger than I am. To clearly identify your market and speak to that market is to increase your chance of success. Too many sales can be a problem, yes, but one ripe with choices. You can always say no to a sale. You can raise your prices. Who would not like to work less and make more? You could also ramp up your game. George Lois once created a campaign for Tommy Hilfiger, early in his career. It is hard to believe he was once unknown. One week after launching the ads, Tommy was on the Johnny Carson show. His competitors asked, “Who does he think he is?”  Tommy did not yet know the answer. But he stepped up to meet his destiny:

“. . . it also drove me into such embarrassment.  I rolled up my sleeves and worked harder than I ever thought I’d work.  I knew there would be only one way to prove the naysayers wrong, and that would be to come out with amazing clothes, so I literally rolled up my sleeves and worked like an animal making sure that every button, every zipper, every button hole, every color, every fit, every fabric was to perfection.  George turbo-charged my success, and then it just took off.”

Did the branding make the man? Or did the man make the brand? Perhaps we will never know. But one thing I do know. The branding and the commitment to that branding brought out the best in Tommy. It challenged him to become all he could be.

Good design is a result of good thinking. It is always an investment–in your company and in yourself. I will continue to make the bold claim that design will supply a good ROI. “Of course,” you may say again. “You have a vested interest to say so. You are in design.”

My answer? Invest, test, and prove the return! Will the real Brand please step up to the plate? Step up to the work of creating a product that will knock the ball out of the park, and then create a brand that will reflect all your company is, and all that you are–one that tells the real story of all your product can do.

See the results for yourself.

Have you ever conferred upon your business the mission and vision it deserves? A business without a brand is like a body without a soul. Are your graphics simply a placeholder until you find more money or a better opportunity? You may never have that opportunity. Even a ship captain invests in a bottle of fine champagne to christen his vessel with a name before its maiden voyage. Your business is also a vessel, carrying its identity and its messages to a specific destination. What message is your business carrying? Is it intuitive where you are going?

 Say what is real. Yes, it is scary to launch and scary to commit to the journey. It does not mean you will never miss the mark.

 It means you have the audacity to become The Real Deal.

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Why do we at etc!graphics inc, a graphic design company, care about your business strategies?  Because no matter how beautiful we make your visuals, your graphics will never make more sense than the clarity of your own vision. The clearer your target, the more lucid your marketing will be, and the better connection you will create with your visual graphics. We want to help you become the best you can be. Join us all this month as we share ways to help your small business sustain and grow in a crowded marketplace. Etc!Graphics is devoted to helping you, the small business owner, think like a marketer. 

Something about a sparkling brand new year inspires us to new beginnings. We envision greater things for ourselves, and this is healthy and good. We resolve, therefore, that January should be the month of resolve. The timing of this idea, however, could have been better. All of our days are merry and bright, and then blam! All of a sudden, we are not what we should be. How does this happen? Does it happen only in America? We suddenly desire a whole new outlook. We desire a whole new look. We feel empowered to take new opportunities when they arise. We seek to become all that we should be. And herein lies the trouble.

Should is a dangerous word. What, exactly, should we be?

The word resolution is a little easier. The root, of course, is resolve. Resolve is the firm determination to employ a specific course of action to accomplish a particular thing. Resolve is the very substance that gives birth to goals. Fortunately, we humans rarely run short of this commodity. It is rather the perseverance that is too often in short supply–and that is the stuff required to follow through.

But somehow in January we get a wild hair, and envision our future selves more courageous, more disciplined, thinner, and smarter. In our honest moments, it is quite clear that we are not that yet. But this angst of all that we should be is the very reason we resolve to become something different in the first place. How can we become something more without feeling like an impostor all the while we are becoming? It is the picture of the skinny lady taped to my refrigerator door that compels me to keep that very door shut. I still hate her.

Small businesses do not behave much differently from humans. They aspire to change as well–and not just in January. The wise entrepreneur holds change as  a continual strategy. It is evolve or die. To be or not to be. That is indeed the question. Very few companies survive the challenges of the marketplace for any length of time and remain the same as they were in the beginning. Fortunately, change is much easier for small business than it is for the large enterprise. The ability of the small company to turn on a dime will forever remain one of its strongest advantages over the corporate freight trains of the world.

But how do you remain an authentic business while you are becoming? How can we become something more without feeling like an impostor all the while we are becoming? We all know the value of authentic brand. Authentic means real. Authentic means an original. As in not fake. As in not pretending to be something you are not. How can you be authentic when you are in the now and the not yet? How can you believe the story yourself when do not yet know the end of that story? How can you be all you have yet to be? 

Here are three bolsters to get you over the hurdles on your way to becoming:

Accept change as a way of life. Remember we are all works in process. None of us is all that we should be. We must change to survive–both personally, and in our businesses. The healthy enterprise seeks information, but they do not accumulate data and knowledge simply to do it. They gather that information in order to use and apply ittoward continual improvement. 

Continually face forward. Successful businesses are not preoccupied with their strengths and weaknesses, as clearly as they may know them. Companies that go the distance focus on all that they can and will be. So you have had a some bad circumstances that have threatened to derail your progress. Now what? Successful entrepreneurs do not waste time looking down at their shoes or back over their shoulder. The future vision istheir reality. They live there, as if it were already here. They ask the question, “In light of this, what next?” They focus on the target.

Make the process the goal, and not the goal itself. In our moments of honesty, we understand that we are not always disciplined, not always brave, and we are not always willing to step outside our comfort zone. To achieve our goals, we must become something that we are not now. How have we ever learned anything new? We mirror the behavior of others who are all that we want to be. We do something new. If we find that we are always behind, we get our behinds out of bed a bit earlier. We have already learned the hard way that staying in it makes us a big behinder. We prepare the night before to accommodate the change. Real change lies in the process, not in the goal.

We have all met fake people, and we have all been disappointed by fake brands. Fakers are the ones who are pretend to be something they are not. Making an effort to become something more than you are at present is not at all in the same category. Making an effort to change for the better is called growth.

Do not allow what and where you are now to stop you from becoming all that you are destined to be.

Jim Rohn said, “If you do not like the way things are, you can change. You are not a tree.”

Thomas Edison said, “If we did all the things we are capable of, we would literally astound ourselves.”

Raising my cup to you. May 2016 be your year to become The Real Deal. Clink clink.

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Why do we at etc!graphics inc, a graphic design company, care about your business strategies?  Because no matter how beautiful we make your visuals, your graphics will never make more sense than the clarity of your own vision. The clearer your target, the more lucid your marketing will be, and the better connection you will create with your visual graphics. We want to help you become the best you can be. Join us all this month as we share ways to help your small business sustain and grow in a crowded marketplace. Etc!Graphics is devoted to helping you, the small business owner, think like a marketer.