"How do you like the draft of the new brochure?" asks the boss.
There are several responses available to you, in order of wonderfulness:
- It’s great.
- There’s a typo here on page 2.
- What if we changed the size of the headline?
- Are you open to considering different typefaces and colors?
- Where are you going to distribute this?
- Why use a brochure? Couldn’t we spend the same money more effectively?
Where are you on this scale?
You could hire a brilliant graphic designer to take your bullet-filled powerpoint and fix the fonts and clean it up. But would it change the game?
When in doubt, challenge the strategy, not the tactics.
Simple example of thinking bigger: What if you hired Jill Greenberg to Photoshop well-known people in your industry to turn them into memorable images instead?
Every day you have the chance to completely reimagine what it is to communicate via Powerpoint. What Marc Andreessen has done is to completely reimagine what it is to be online. That’s where the win lies, when you reinvent.
The bigger point is that none of us are doing enough to challenge the assignment. Every day, I spend at least an hour of my time looking at my work and what I’ve chosen to do next and wonder, "is this big enough?"
Yesterday, I was sitting with a friend who runs a small training company. He asked, "I need better promotion. How do I get more people to take the professional type design course I offer at my office?" My answer was a question, as it usually is. "Why is the course at your office?" and then, "Why is it a course and not accreditation, or why not turn it into a guild for job seekers, where you could train people and use part of the tuition to hire someone to organize a private job board? You could guarantee clients well-trained students (no bozos) and you could guarantee students better jobs… everyone wins."
I have no idea if my idea for the training company is a good one, but I know it’s a bigger one. That’s when marketing pays for itself. Not when we find a typo or redesign a logo, but when we reconsider the question and turn the answer into something bigger than we ever expected.
September 19, 2008
Cory points us to this collection of logos from Saul Bass. Twelve giant companies, all with basically interchangeable logos.
And that’s the point. These big companies didn’t want the logo to be part of their story, they just wanted it to fit in with all the other big company logos. The only thing the logo said was, "we’re a big company with a big company logo."
The same thing goes on with pricing. If you price your products like the competition does, you’re not saying anything with your pricing. "Move along, there’s nothing to see here." Which is fine. It just means you need to tell a story with something else.
Marketing storytelling is not about doing everything differently. You do many things the same, intentionally, because those ‘same things’ aren’t part of your story. It’s the different stuff where you will be noticed, and the different stuff where you tell your story.
The layout of this blog is intentionally bland. The books I write intentionally have standard covers and paper and are sold in standard stores at standard prices (most of the time, anyway). That’s because the distribution and pricing isn’t part of what I’m trying to say.
If you’re not telling a story with some aspect of your marketing choices, then make sure that aspect is exactly what people expect. To do otherwise is to create random noise, not to further your marketing.
September 18, 2008
A free half hour audio lecture I just did for non-profits that want to grow is right here. Please skip over the first few minutes of silence and announcements…
You can see all of Network for Good’s presentations right here.
September 17, 2008
over the top any more.
The bar keeps being raised. That service you thought was so remarkable is now standard. Sorry.
"There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home."
Ken Olsen, ceo of DEC,
Only 31 years ago. DEC was one of the leading computer companies of the day, but not for long.
Take a look at the geek discussion boards and you’ll see an endless list of sharp-tongued critics, each angling to shoot down one idea or another. And then take a look at the companies that show up at the various pitch shows, and you’ll see one company after another pitching incremental improvements based on current assumptions.
The reason is simple: technologists know how to make things work.
When an engineer has a proven ability to ship stuff, to keep things humming and not crashing, it’s easy to fall into the trap of rejecting anything that hasn’t demonstrated that it can work, that hasn’t proven itself in the market.
Competence is not the same thing as imagination.
PS the marketing elite have precisely the same problem.
September 16, 2008
The stock market is going to be bonkers today.
And for most people, it won’t matter so much. Because most of us aren’t focused on flipping assets. We’re building value by creating interactions that work, by writing stories that spread or by designing products and services that actually create something worth paying for.
That sounds like a treacly mission statement, but it’s easy to get distracted by external noise instead of focusing on what counts. Hint: They started Google in the middle of the dot com melt down.
The short-term consequences of an unstable stock market are real and uncomfortable. More (and better) adult supervision would have gone a long way, imho. But we can’t control this, all we can do is focus on what matters.
Hang in.
September 15, 2008
The web loves lists almost as much as it loves video.
Consider this list from Chris Brogan.
Or take a look at this PDF
(exclusively published here) from Ed (with editing help from the triiibe).
I’d give you a list of lists, but there are already plenty of those. Your turn to add a list to the list.
I’m a devoted FF user, and have been forever.
But the response to Chrome shouldn’t be to launch new features.
Here’s the problem/challenge: when your friends switch to Firefox, your life doesn’t get better.
And the key to growing any piece of software (or just about any product or service, actually) is the opposite. People will recommend something if adoption improves their lives.
Fax machines? Life is better for me if you have one.
Fashion? Life is better for me if I’m not the only one wearing this.
Religious sect? Life is better for me if I’m not the only one in the building.
So, Firefox needs to add functionality that makes the surfing experience better for all users when more users use Firefox.
There are many ways to do this, and you can invent more than I ever could. Systems that allow for rating pages, or grouping them, or communicating (but only with FF users). [worth clarifying: I’m not saying that FF should arbitrarily exclude outsiders from a common form of online communication. I’m saying that FF as a tool can create new forms of communication and collaboration, forms that only work if you have the right technology. So far, web browsing hasn’t been about communication among browsers, it’s largely a monologue from the site to the user. The browser can be a lot more than that.]
In fact, this sort of functionality benefits any brand or product that can figure out how to create it.
September 14, 2008
The supply and demand curve isn’t a curve. It’s an abstraction of lots of individual behaviors.
And so, lots of organizations end up hitting a wall with no warning.
My car insurance bill has been steadily rising, year after year, despite the fact that I have a clean record. The logic, I’m sure, was, "well, let’s raise it a little and see who quits…"
If revenue increases enough to make up for the few who quit, you come out ahead. So, quarter after quarter, year after year, repeat the same process. Raise it a little, check to see if revenue rises in aggregate, and repeat.
I’d get the bill, sigh about the fee, consider the hassle of switching, pay the bill and move on.
Until last week. Last week the number was too high. Something in my relationship with the insurance company shattered. After all, it’s not like they had done anything for me, not like I knew anyone there. It was just momentum. And the number was suddenly enough to make me take action.
19 minutes later, I was at Geico.
The problem for my insurance company is that a whole bunch of people will do this at once. When you hit the breaking point with one person, it might be 1,000 or 100,000 people who do the same thing at the same time. And you don’t get a second chance. They’re gone.
It’s not just money. It’s service. Or trust. Or spam.
You can stretch a rubber band for a long time. But then it breaks.
September 13, 2008
Of course you should listen to your customers.
But which ones?
Should you listen to the loud ones, the ones who call the sports radio stations to complain about the pitching, the ones who post websites about your lousy service, the ones who organize nationwide boycotts? Should you listen to the angry ones, the ones with a limited vocabulary (heavy on profanity, short on spelling) who know how to use email and aren’t afraid to use it?
Or, should you listen to the customers that are the most profitable, the most loyal or the most likely to spread word of mouth among the people you want to become your customers?
Here are three common listening mistakes:
- Believing that your customers are monolithic, that they all want the same thing.
- Believing that loud customers speak for all customers.
- Worrying that if you don’t satisfy short-term, loudly articulated needs, you will fail.
There’s an art here, it’s not a science. I’d focus on a few tactics:
- When someone is in pain, recognize it and address it if you can.
- You decide, not your customers, where you want to go. Lead, don’t follow.
- Amplify the voices of the people you care about, those with the most value to you in the long run. Give them a platform and make it easier for them to speak to you and the rest of the market.
And here’s one thing I’d do on a regular basis: Get a video camera or perhaps a copy machine and collect comments and feedback from the people who matter most to your business. Then show those comments to the boss and to your staff and to other customers. Do it regularly. The feedback you expose is the feedback you’ll take to heart.
September 12, 2008
