Meet Rick O’Shea

Rick is a fine, hard-working Entrepreneur. He has always lived and worked in the same small town, and everyone loves him. Though Rick has been in business for quite some time, he confesses his business has never gotten over the proverbial hump.

Still, Rick does not want to advertise. He has tried so many different things, and he cannot make it work. “All this mumbo jumbo about branding is just a way for advertisers to take the money out of my pocket and put it in theirs”, he says. “I just need to focus on making a profit.” So Rick creates his own advertising. He is convinced he has “saved a lot of cash” through the years. Maybe. But probably not. Because no one can remember his company name or remember what he does. And if they do remember him, it is for all the wrong reasons.

Rick’s business is fashion challenged. Because he has never defined his brand, nothing is consistent, and nothing matches. Every new advertising effort is like starting over, with no fighting chance to build momentum. He is a bit like the kid in your junior high that was perpetually out of style, and yet no one wanted to be the one to tell him. He tries this color and then that color in his brochures, this style and then this design. If Rick O Shea is leaving any perception, it is not impressive. His business does not come up top of mind. His business Rick O Shea’s off the top of everyone’s mind.

Rick’s poor ROI from his efforts only cements his belief that advertising does not work. Rick is not short on competition, and the only way he knows to bring in more sales is to lower his prices. Which results in less profit. Which results in less profit to reinvest in branding. It becomes a vicious cycle.

Humans are pattern-seeking animals. Our memories are trained by the consistency of these patterns. The best thing you can do to make your small business memorable is to represent your brand consistently.

Perceptions are reality. Perceptions drive sales. Unmanaged perceptions are replaced with debilitating assumptions. If you have never bothered with Brand, you cannot expect your company name to be branded into anyone’s memory. You will be just so forgettable. If I remember correctly, that is the flip side Nat King Cole’s Unforgettable. Can you hear it?

So forgettable

That’s what you are

So forgettable

Though near or far

That’s why darling

It’s incredible

That someone that’s so forgettable,

Thinks they should be

Unforgettable too.

Rick falsely believes that when advertising yields nothing, it is advertising’s fault. Wouldn’t you like to be memorable? Consistency in representing your brand and your visual voice may be your chance for a hit record.

Meet Les Waite

Les is Rick O-Shea’s cousin. Les is not one to deny the power of brand. He is serious about business and knows it is as valuable as any other asset that appears long-term asset on his balance sheet. But like Adam Baum, Les desires to bootstrap. He plans to do Brand later when he has earned a profit.

Les’s thinking reveals two common misconceptions about Branding.

First, he believes it takes a great deal of money to create a brand. He is correct in believing that any valuable business asset requires some investment. But what he does not know is that initially, a brand culture and a brand personality are simply a series of strategic choices, and cost you nothing but time. Defining your brand will help you structure your customer service to deliver a consistent customer experience. When your customer knows what they can expect, they will keep coming back. That sort of investment has a solid ROI.

The second misconception: Les thinks that a Brand is something he will do later. In reality, Les already has a brand. Because he thinks he is waiting to do it LATER, he is not thinking about how it is coming across NOW. Les’s Brand NOW is akin to a plain paper sack. He’s a no-label company. He does not even have a “thank you have a nice day” printed on his sack. We might conclude he is a green business because it is a paper sack and not a plastic sack. Is he green or isn’t he green? No one knows for sure. No one knows what he stands for, or what he believes in, or why he does what he does. He is attractive to no one–especially not his ideal client.

What Les is losing in opportunity cost is costing him exponentially more than if he invested in a good Brand model and a good identity design in the first place. With a clear message, he could be resonating with his ideal customer and in a way that they would understand.

Unless the stars perfectly align, unless his hair is parted correctly every day for many months, and unless he repeats several Hail Mary’s per day, it is a crap shoot that he will ever find enough profit to become a real brand.

Without a real brand identity, you may know what you are doing, but no one else does. Become an intentional brand, and every advertising effort will build exponentially.

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In the 26 years that we have been helping small companies with their marketing and advertising, we have seen almost every kind of difficulty one can imagine. Throughout this month, we are sharing some of the most common problems using fictitious characters in a humorous way. While all of the details in these stories are true, the names have been changed, to protect the guilty. Should any of the stories sound familiar, it is our desire that they would help steer you around some pitfalls. Stay tuned for more Complex Characters of Capitalism.