1. Websites will get simpler. With the increase of mobile usage and a trend towards complexity over the past few years, we will get back to basics in 2013. Instead of throwing everything but the kitchen sink into websites, people will put more thought and consideration into whether the content (and design) will be necessary and helpful to the user.

2. Website messaging will be more focused on emotional connections and purpose. With so many websites to choose from and a bombardment of advertising and marketing, companies will need to talk more about why they’re in business (instead of what they sell) and create emotional connections to stand out from the crowd. Simon Sinek’s “Start with Why” movement has been gaining momentum, and people are seeing companies like Apple and Nike excel at this type of messaging. Other businesses will follow suit with their websites in the coming year.

3. Content strategy will move to the forefront. Up until now, the emphasis has been more about how website look rather than content, but that will change. Design is still important, but instead of just making a flashy website with all the bells and whistles, companies will pay more attention to the role of content and how it can help achieve their goals.

4. Websites will become more “touchable” and “swipeable.” With the increasing popularity of touch screen devices, people will need to consider how websites will work with touching and swiping instead of mouse clicking. This will change how interfaces look and work, especially with clickable areas and navigation.

What do you think? Will these ideas go mainstream, or will other hot topics bubble to the surface?

Image courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/ckelley/3158192219/

This accidental hyphen situation reminds me of line break tags in website content. Every time I enter this tag in a site it makes me wince because I know that it’s a short-term solution, for one context (typically the desktop browser).

The days of creating content — and therefore designing the way content is presented — for discreet contexts are quickly entering our rearview mirrors.

These days, content is created to be used across any number of devices, including those that haven’t even been invented yet. And design solutions need to adapt to this reality. This means a move away from traditional static Photoshop web page mockups that appear so final and suggest there is a “right” way that the content will look.

To break out of this static approach and emphasize designing for adaptive content (and responsive design), I’m exploring three tools and techniques:

Page description diagrams

Page description diagrams help guide the structure of a page because they clarify the priorities of each content block. I think this will me help look at pages as groupings of distinct content blocks (or types of content), rather than consider each page on the site a discreet element. Really, a web site is a grouping of all of these content blocks, and they could be presented in a number of formats in addition to a “page”.

Style tiles

In an effort to move away from static web page designs, I’d like to use style tiles to define basic elements and allow the components of the site to shift as needed on different devices. I like that they put the emphasis on building an adaptable, flexible visual language rather than fixed solutions.

Components rather than pages

Putting page description diagrams together with style tiles will allow me to design the basic look of the website components. The components will likely be presented differently on different devices. So considering them as units that all work together (remembering to use the priorities defined in the page description diagrams) to present a group of content will help me think through how they’ll be designed for different states.

I think it’s still necessary to show a couple of key page mockups, such as the homepage and a basic internal page, so that the team can see the components in action. But ideally more emphasis will be put on creating a kit of parts that supports a fluid, flexible, and scalable design.

How are you changing your design process to be more responsive or prepare for adaptive content?

One of our recent clients, Patxi’s, was feeling some of these pains. Like many businesses that expand in a short period of time, Patxi’s co-founders were no longer able to be as involved in every location, so it became harder to replicate the Patxi’s experience and keep everything consistent. After working with them to refresh their branding, redesign their website, and refine the customer experience, we thought we’d share our observations and lessons on how to market a restaurant, in hopes of helping others who are in similar positions.

Visual and verbal trends

Each restaurant has a story or something that makes them unique. Even though their offerings are usually quite different, they often tend to look and sound the same. Here are some of the trends we noticed while researching several restaurants’ branding, websites, and marketing:

Visual trends

• Cheesy or theme-y visuals based on the type of cuisine
• Darker colors combined with reds, oranges, and yellows
• Either bare bones content, or over-the-top flash and graphics (rarely anything in the middle)
• Menus in PDFs, which are often out of date
• Large hero or feature areas with close-up pictures of food
• Large maps or long lists of locations

Verbal trends

• Minimal copy that tends to emphasize what the owners and staff want to say, rather than what resonates with customers
• Messaging that’s focused on customer service, tasty food, and other generic traits that others claim to have too
• Promotion of seasonal dishes and specials
• References to beer, wine, or other complementary pairings
• Outdated information, news, and announcements
• Featured reviews or awards

What’s missing

There’s too much focus on the things that don’t usually matter to the customer, and not enough on the things that do.

Restaurant owners and staff often believe they know exactly what their customers are looking for. They want good service, yummy food, a friendly environment, etc. Those things do matter, but the problem is that people expect them. If you don’t have those qualities, people won’t dine with you. Plus, other restaurants are saying the exact same thing, so it all starts to sound the same.

Instead, restaurants should be focusing on the overall experience—all the little things that add up to a customer thinking, “Wow, that was amazing!” and telling all their friends about it. Sure, they love your food and service. But what makes them remember you may be surprising. Maybe it’s the unique way your food is prepared or presented. Perhaps it’s the little mint or cookie that comes with the bill. Or maybe they know they can count on you for a consistent experience every time they come in.

Embrace all those little things, and focus on making the whole experience unique, positive, and consistent.

How to market your restaurant and serve up a memorable experience

1. Ask your customers why they choose you over other restaurants, and invest in those areas. When business gets slow, it’s tempting to cut corners to save money. However, if you start taking away the things that you’re known for, your customers will be disappointed and won’t come back. The best way to figure out your key differentiators or your customers’ favorite things about your restaurant is to ask them. Conduct a short survey, go around to tables while people are dining, or train your waiters on how to ask the right questions and report back on the results.

2. Keep every element of the experience consistent. If you’re a Mexican restaurant and play Michael Bolton over the sound system, people are going to be confused. If you invest in building a beautiful website and then the in-person experience doesn’t match what was advertised, your customers will be puzzled and may not return. Every touchpoint matters—from the website, to the person who answers the phone, to the greeter, to the waiter, and everything in between—so be sure to put time and thought into each one.

3. Develop visuals and messaging that communicate what make you truly different. Look at five of your competitors’ websites, and write how you would describe their look, voice, and primary things they’re promoting. Then, go in the complete opposite direction. Talk about different things (even if you truly are better at them), and choose unique colors and designs. It’s one of the only ways to stand out among the noise.

4. Don’t put your website menus in PDFs. Use HTML text so that menus load faster, are easier to read, and can be changed quicker.

5. Get professional photos taken. Point-and-shoot camera images rarely do justice to your food. Having professional photos taken makes it look more appealing and appetizing, which will impress customers and entice them to visit your restaurant.

6. Keep your menus, website, and other marketing materials updated. There’s nothing more frustrating than going to a wrong location, ordering something that’s no longer on the menu, or seeing old information that isn’t accurate. By keeping everything current, you’re helping provide a positive, consistent experience for your customers and delivering on their expectations.

This is just the tip of the iceberg, but these suggestions will get you on a path to designing a compelling experience for your restaurant. For other advice on how to improve your website, take a look at these 6 lessons for designing restaurant and food websites.

If you’d like to brainstorm other ways to improve your restaurant or see how we’ve helped businesses just like yours, get in touch with us.

*Source: http://www.restaurant.org/research/facts/

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sunny987/4450299688/

Here are some of our favorite industry blogs, books, websites, and other resources:

Books: 

• 12 of our favorite business books
• Mobile First by Luke Wroblewski
• Responsive Web Design by Ethan Marcotte
• Design is a Job by Mike Monteiro
• Designing for Emotion by Aaron Walkter
• Our CEO, James Archer’s, favorite business and design books
• Content Strategy for the Web by Kristina Halvorson and Melissa Rach

Design blogs and websites:

• A List Apart (see this article for a great introduction to responsive design)
• Brand New
• Brand DNA
• Brain Pickings
• Communication Arts
• Design Envy 
• Design.org
• Design Work Life
• Dieline
• FastCo.Design
• Logo Design Love 
• Responsive design by Hagon Design
• Startups, this is how design works
• User experience by Smashing Magazine

Marketing, copywriting, and content strategy blogs:

• A List Apart (see this article for a useful introduction to content strategy)
• AdFreak
• Convince and Convert 
• Copyblogger 
• Daily Writing Tips
• MarketingProfs Daily Fix
• Seth Godin
• Simon Sinek

What are some of your favorites that you’d add to this list? Leave a comment, and let us know!

Get in touch with us if your hunger for learning still isn’t satisfied or if you want to chat about some of these topics. Happy reading!

Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/thomashawk/5666070435/

Industry overview

Decades ago, banks were figures in the community, where the staff knew everyone by name and spent time hearing about their customers’ lives before getting down to business. People put unconditional trust in their bank and saw it as an extension of their town, not just a business that wanted to take their money and run.

Over the years, the economy improved (along with personal wealth), and people began keeping more and more of their money at banks instead of under the mattress. This growth led to many banks turning into insatiable giants that paid too much attention to money and not enough on the people behind those dollars. Product and service offerings expanded, staff grew to mammoth proportions, and the overall experience began to feel cold and robotic compared to its humble beginnings in small-town America.

Like many industries that face increasing competition, banks began to get watered down, and eventually, everyone seemed to look and sound the same. The recent recession didn’t help the situation, as banks faced a confidence crisis, causing them to try even harder to gain people’s trust and business.

The banks that have ended up on top are the ones that focus on things that are different, important, and create the best experience possible for their customers.

Visual and verbal trends

With gobs of banks using similar color palettes, stock photography, confusing product names, and bland messaging, it can be hard to tell how they’re different. Here are some examples of visual and verbal trends that you’ll see throughout the industry:

Visual

• Corporate, “professional” colors, like blue, grey, and white
• Stock photos with smiling people, retirees, and families
• Bold and masculine fonts
• Squares, circles, and other geometric shapes
• Crowded, clunky websites that make it difficult to find what you need
• Home page promos and deals
• Lots of long menus, drop-downs, and tabs

Verbal

• Names with “America,” “Nation,” or the state in it
• Bland, inauthentic messaging
• Lots of corporate jargon and disclaimers
• Large amounts of text
• Confusing product and service names (e.g., What is “Opportunity Checking”?)
• Emphasis on trust, security, rates, and fees
• Complicated ways to contact the bank (1-800 numbers, anonymous contact forms, etc.)
• Few references to differentiators

What’s missing

Banks aren’t showing or talking about what makes them different or giving people a reason to choose them over others.

Most banks have fallen into the common branding trap of doing the exact same thing as everyone else. They’re afraid of alienating people or losing customers because they’re zigging when everyone is zagging, but in reality, all it’s doing is creating a sea of sameness. Almost all bank experiences have become a necessary hassle instead of an enjoyable treat.

This approach makes it harder to attract customers and even more difficult to keep them. Here are some tips on how to do things differently and create a better experience.

How to market your bank, improve your branding, and design a positive customer experience

• Use friendlier language to create an emotional connection. Even the most hardcore number-crunchers are crunching those numbers for emotional reasons. They’re looking for relationships and a human connection. Embrace the psychology behind your customer’s decisions to get an edge over competitors who are focused on listing objective features and numbers.
• Don’t talk about trust, security, ethics, integrity, or professionalism. These things are defaults, and people already expect them. Characteristics shared with competitors don’t have much marketing value because everyone else is claiming the same. Likewise, if the customer doesn’t really care about a particular trait, it doesn’t matter if it’s unique or not. Find the sweet spot (important and different), and promote those traits.
• Focus on things that are unique and important. Everyone is talking about the same things, so dig deeper and talk about what really makes you different. Do you offer a product or service no one else does? Do you have a customer service style that is unique from everyone else’s? Are you involved in the community or some other special initiative? Talk about it!
• Include photos of real employees and customers. Real photos give customers insight into the people behind the scenes and create a more personal experience.
• Emphasize relationships over prices and rates. Price-sensitive customers tend to produce low profit margins and can be easily lured away. Loyal customers are usually more willing to pay more and are more likely to refer other customers to you in the future.
• Dig in to your website analytics. Don’t make website decisions based off assumptions or opinions. Find out how people are actually using your site, what pages they’re most interested in, where they’re getting lost or confused, and how you can better structure your site to get them the information they need.
• Create a responsive website. People are going mobile, but developing an entirely separate mobile website or app requires a significant amount of time and money. Instead, consider designing a responsive website that automatically adjusts to different devices and browsers. (Take a look at how we did this for Gateway Bank for an example of how responsive websites work.)
• Keep the experience consistent on the phone, in person, and at all other touchpoints. The brand experience promised by the website, brochures, etc. should remain consistent in the way your staff members answer the phone, interact with customers face-to-face, resolve problems, etc. Make sure you provide staff training and align your internal culture with your external marketing efforts.

People are looking for refreshing and reliable alternatives, but banks just keep giving us the same ol’ same ol’. Use these suggestions to break free from the stereotypes and cliches, boost business, and give your customers an experience they’ll remember.

If you’d like to brainstorm more ideas on how to implement these tips or other ways to stand out, get in touch with us today.

Photo credit: Flickr Tracy_Olson

Gateway Bank has grown significantly since opening in 2007 and has become known for its warmth, personal service, and community focus—something their customers say they haven’t found at other banks. However, Gateway’s team realized that the unique in-person experience their customers were getting wasn’t translating online. The website wasn’t doing them justice, and they needed help figuring out how to communicate what makes them special.

With this mission in mind, Gateway sought the help of Forty, a customer experience design firm that provides high-end branding and design services for businesses nationwide. Forty worked with Gateway to realign their brand experience and design a compelling responsive website that automatically adjusts to multiple screen sizes, helps people find the information they need quickly and easily, and conveys what makes Gateway Bank so unique.

“We’re excited to be the first Arizona bank—and one of the first in the country—to offer a responsive website,” said President and CEO, James Christensen. “Designing our site this way instead of developing a separate mobile app saved us time and money, and it just made more sense for our users.”

Gateway is blazing a trail with their new website and providing their customers with a more consistent and impressive online experience. Visit gcbaz.com to learn more about this remarkable bank, and to see a responsive website in action.

One of my favorite things about a conference is loading my head with tons of goodies that make me a better designer. One of the worst things is moving swiftly from a conference into day-to-day work, forgetting about the goodies I was so excited about. So in the spirit of one of the presenter’s (Kate Bingaman-Burt) talks, here are my top five moments from the 2012 Phoenix Design Week Conference:

Avoid perfect-scenario website design

Designers tend to create website mockups with ideal scenarios. This looks pretty, but it can “break” when the website owners actually start using the site. Those one-line titles and two-line descriptions that balanced out so nicely can quickly become uneven (which is soul-crushing to a designer!). To account for this, Stephanie Sullivan recommends mocking up a website design with “weird” content so everyone can imagine what happens during normal, “real” use.

Consider the cost (and priority) of browser consistency

As a visual person, it’s tempting to want a web design solution to look the same in all browsers and devices. During a break between sessions, Marvin Forte gave me a helpful reminder that a website will never look exactly the same in all browsers. If a client does wish to pursue an implementation that matches across browsers and devices, it requires a significant time investment. Plus, as the discussion of responsive design swells, we’re realizing that we should spend more time on designing websites based on how people want to digest content, rather than worrying about corner radius in Internet Explorer 8.

Develop a deeper understanding of what makes you tick

We’ve basically become like-aholics online. Instead of superficially liking every third image on the web, Kate Bingaman-Burt offers an antidote: develop a deeper understanding of why you like what you like. By choosing five things that are meaningful to you and exploring why they’re important, you can learn about yourself and your style, as well as develop a more thoughtful approach to designing. This is inspiring to me personally (I figured out my five things!), and at Forty, we’ve talked about using this technique to narrow down a large idea or challenge to five key things that we can focus on.

Understand why change is hard

From the science and psychology sector, Michael Duah explained why change is hard: our brains like to work efficiently, and they work much more efficiently when we’re making it do new things. Our automatic brain prefers repetition, which explains why it can be tough to go to a conference, learn about new things, and then actually put those new ideas into practice. But by setting goals that you expect to accomplish and value highly, change is more likely. Just don’t let your perception that you “can’t” do something prevent you from trying.

Question everything

Eddie Opara inspired me to approach design challenges with even more questions. He doesn’t stand for doing something just because it’s always been done that way. For example, when a client requested a plain-Jane manual of obligatory content that nobody would ever read, he helped rethink it and delivered a more thoughtful and engaging solution, which helped people actually understand what they should do and why they should care. He carefully considers the best way to deliver his client’s message to their audience, whether that’s through design on paper or a new technology — a great model of someone using design thinking, as opposed to just making things look nice visually.

Here’s hoping that repeating these new ideas will help retrain my automatic brain. And if you attended the Phoenix Design Week 2012 conference, please share your top moments!

The template I created is much more extensive than the sample in the original article. In fact, the file became a little overwhelming and I almost bailed on the whole idea! I’d much prefer for it to be a simple little thing. But the reality is that designing web experiences is complicated. If you ever hear anyone say “Oh, it’s just a simple website,” feel free to respond with “There’s no such thing.”

You can download this Photoshop template and use as you’d like. The basic purpose of the guide is to be a reminder to consider the typographical elements of a site, not to simply change the colors in the file. If you’re going to hand this off to a developer as a guide, remember to change the font details below each type sample.

Download web typography Photoshop template

Let me know what you think of this idea. If you’ve found other techniques that work well, I’d love to hear about them!

In order to provide the best online experience possible, you have to deliver context-driven content in ways that not only consider your audiences’ wants, but also their needs. Contrary to what you may have heard, diving into building a spiffy mobile site (especially if it’s device-specific) is not always the way to go. In fact, after much deliberation amongst techies, designers, and developers everywhere, Google finally put the debate to rest (for now) by stating their stance on this issue: instead of creating a separate mobile site, use responsive design when it makes sense (depending on the site’s audience, purpose, budget, and timeline).

Responsive design is a technique used to create a website that automatically responds to the size of your screen. This means instead of creating different sites for a desktop, mobile phone, tablet, and who knows what else in the future, you create one magical web experience that adapts to fit whatever device it’s being displayed on. To see an example of what a responsive site looks like, check out a site we just designed for voltaautomation.com, or one of our favorite design resources, smashingmagazine.com. Once you’re there, resize your browser, or simply visit the site on a mobile device to see how it changes.

This fluid technique is valuable for a laundry list of reasons, but mainly because it’s nimble enough to provide the best experience possible for every reader. No itty bitty websites on your phone that you can’t read or click on. No presumptuous default mobile sites that get rid of all the information you actually need or guess at what you want to find. No worrying about wasting your money on a site that will be outdated and unusable faster than you can say “return on investment.”

If you’re a copywriter, web writer, or any other communication designer, you might wonder what responsive web design has to do with you. Well, this whole responsive school of thought goes way beyond development—it has to do with content and web writing, too. Writing is like designing with words. In order to be good at it, it’s important to understand the principles of design, and know how both visual and verbal design work together. The content and copy on your website needs to be just as fluid and adaptable as the structure that contains them. This takes careful consideration and planning.

After all, translating a desktop experience into a compact, mobile one is not a job for robots. Things like writing shorter copy and crafting concise messaging for smaller devices requires human insight and logic. The default rules of a mobile template can’t create context and priority, and they won’t know how to bring the most relevant and important information to the forefront. You and your readers must shape and guide this fluid experience. Thinking about responsive content is just as important as thinking about responsive design because it all comes back to the same thing—providing an easier, more enjoyable experience for your customers and helping them find the information that’s most pertinent and useful to them.

We want our clients (and all the companies we touch) to be ready for the future, not stuck in the past. That’s why we’ve made responsive design a part of our process, or a least a consideration to discuss whenever appropriate. In fact, our own site will be responsive soon enough. Even when clients don’t quite understand why responsive design is important at first, we consider it our responsibility to talk about it, help them stay ahead of the game, and provide even more value for their company and their customers.

Have you included a mobile strategy in your website or talked about how to plan for the future of the web (or even—DUN DUN DUN—what comes after websites)? There’s lots to consider, but no need to feel overwhelmed. We’re here to help.

You: “So, where do you want to go?”
Date: “Wherever you want to go.”
You: “Maybe dinner? What kind of food do you want?”
Date: “I want to eat whatever kind of food you like.”
You: “Okayyyy…how about Thai?”
Date: “If you like Thai, I like Thai.”

How’s the date going so far? Are you excited about this compelling new person in your life?

Or are you dreading the next few hours you’ve committed to spend with this characterless shell of a human who derives his or her character from whatever you say?

I’m reminded of this scenario every time I see yet another brand fall prey to the ever-seductive “It’s all about you!” approach to branding.

Some recent examples:

I can understand why companies think this is a good idea. I’m sure the pitch went something like, “blah blah individuality blah YouTube blah kids these days blah social media blah blah Twitter blah you you you….”

But here’s the thing: as a consumer, I’m really not looking for more brands to grovel at my feet and tell me it’s all about me. Whenever I hear “You’re an individual!”, I want to respond with “Yes I am. Now who the heck are you?”

We’re naturally attracted to people and brands that stand for something, and we’re suspicious of those that try to mold themselves around our preferences.

So instead of making it all about your customer, figure out what your brand is really all about, and then be that as compellingly and as vividly as you can muster. The customers will come, and they’ll love you for it.

That’s why I get so frustrated every time I hear someone recommending crowdsourced design services like 99designs. The math just doesn’t work out for business owners, but it looks like such a compelling solution on the surface that they keep falling for it.

If you’re not familiar with it, the idea behind these services is that instead of hiring a designer, you hold a “design contest,” receive dozens (or hundreds) of design submissions, pick the best one, and then award that person the money. (Companies like 99designs provide a web-based platform for running these contests.) It’s an intoxicating concept for many reasons, including that we misperceive increased options as increased value, and that it sounds vaguely like some kind of social revolution someone read about in Fast Company once.

There’s been a lot of talk in the design community about how bad these services are fundamentally bad for designers, but — here’s reality — business owners don’t care what’s good for designers. And that’s fine; it’s not their job to care. Their job is to get the most value possible for their business.

This is where the numbers come in. Work the numbers, and crowdsourcing design doesn’t make much sense.

Let’s say you find an up-and-coming student designer at your local university, and pay them $1,000 to design a logo for you. If their normal rate is $50/hr (which is reasonable for a less-experienced designer), you’ll get about 20 hours of their time for research, brainstorming, designing, revision, etc. It’s not a ton, but for a small business you could probably get a pretty good logo out of that project. In addition, that student designer has made some much-needed money, you’ve supported the local economy, etc.

Let’s compare that to a crowdsourced “design contest.” You put up the same $1,000, and you get 100 logo variations from different designers. They’re certainly not going to put 20 hours worth of thinking and effort into a 1-in-100 chance at getting $1,000. If you divide that 20-hour-effort by the 1-in-100 chance, it comes to a reasonable time expenditure of just 12 minutes.

Think about that. For a 1-in-100 chance of $1,000, to make about the same money as the student designer is making, it only makes financial sense for the crowdsourced designers to put just 12 minutes of effort toward your project. Or maybe the designers on these sites don’t have the skills to command a $50/hr rate, and they’re willing to put 30 minutes ($20/hr) or even 60 minutes ($10/hr) toward your project. That’s still not much.

Under the pressure of those constraints, many “designers” on crowdsourcing sites revert to simply stealing other logos, tweaking them, and submitting them as original work. This practice is so widespread that many crowdsourcing sites implicitly tolerate it, banning designers only after they’re caught three times. (You can imagine how many stolen logos go unnoticed.)

It’s a hundred lower-quality designers putting a few minutes of effort into your project (and possibly stealing the design from someone else) versus one higher-quality designer putting 20+ hours of effort into your project (and creating an original logo).

At its core, the crowdsourcing model is based on the “monkeys with typewriters” principle: it’s the hope that if you have enough options, you’ll find a diamond in there somewhere. It’s the misconception that you’ll increase value by increasing the number of options. However, if you want a coherent story, you’re always going to be better off hiring one writer, even a less-experienced writer, than you will be trying to build an army of monkeys pounding on keyboards. You want better options, not more options.

Consider outspoken crowdsourcing advocate Guy Kawasaki, who used crowdSPRING to get a design for his new book. He paid $1,000 to receive 760 designs from 226 designers (an average of $1.32 per design, or $4.42 per designer). The end result? The crowdsourced versions weren’t good enough, so he hired designer Sarah Brody to do it right.

The idea of crowdsourcing design is tremendously appealing at first, but when you work through the math, it just doesn’t work out. There has been lots of buzz about the process (“the wisdom of crowds!”), but little evidence of effective branding results coming from it.

All hype aside, it just doesn’t make business sense.

As James discussed in his blog post on how to build a rock-solid brand, your purpose isn’t just corporate mumbo jumbo. If you’ve ever had to endure the pain of reading a typical mission statement, it probably included a bunch of dry and meaningless babble about “increasing shareholder value” or “providing the best customer service around.” That’s not a purpose. It’s not what drives them to get up in the morning, guides their decisions, or inspires their tribe. It’s what the CEO or board thought would sound good during their annual strategy meeting.

Purpose is powerful because it causes everything else to make a lot more sense. You no longer have to deliberate your goals for the next few years or the concept for your next campaign. You don’t have to figure out what qualities you’re looking for in a new employee or how to train them to do their job right. You don’t even have to think twice about how you should handle that really angry call from a customer you’ve been avoiding. Why not? Because the path is illuminated for you when you’re driven by a deeper purpose.

A while back, Forty discovered our purpose. We realized everything we do goes back to championing humanity and building experiences for humans instead of spreadsheets or robots. We feel fulfilled in our purpose when we help others reveal theirs.

What’s your purpose? If you haven’t ever thought about it before, take a few minutes to ponder these questions.

(Here’s a tip: With each response, ask yourself, “Why?” a few times to get to the root of your answer. And if your answer has anything to do with money, keep going. You could do a lot of things to make money. Why are you doing this?)

1. Why did you get into this business instead of something else?
2. What difference are you trying to make in the world?
3. What one problem do you want to fix?
4. What’s your brand archetype?
5. You feel happiest when _____.
6. What happened last time you were excited and ran home to tell your spouse, mom, etc.?
7. What are your strengths from StrengthFinder? How do you use these strengths to serve, help, and contribute?
8. What do people typically ask you for help with?
9. If you had to teach something, what would you teach?
10. Who inspires you the most (anyone you do or don’t know), and what qualities about them inspire you?
11. What causes do you strongly believe in or connect with?
12. You are now 90 years old, sitting on a rocking chair outside your porch. You’re happy with the wonderful life you’ve been blessed with. Looking back at your life, all that you’ve achieved and acquired, all the relationships you’ve developed. What matters to you most?
13. If you woke up tomorrow morning with enough money in the bank to retire, what would you do with your time?

If all of this just isn’t your cup of tea or if you want to bounce some ideas around with someone, feel free to chat with us.

The first part of this is the willingness to dive deep into a question and it’s subsequent answer with more questions. When speaking to a client, the questions you ask will often get you some surface level answers – some of which even seem like they are the full answer to your question. What separates a good team from a great one though is the ability to ask follow-up questions that really dig into the information you glean from the first question and get to what’s really on your client’s mind. This is why a good doctor will spend more time asking questions than writing prescriptions for treatment. Dive three or four layers into the initial question, and you’ll find answers that will lead you to the root causes of your client’s problem, not just the symptoms they can see.

The second part of being a real questioner is to ask questions with intention. You don’t have a script of what questions you want to ask, but you have an idea of the problems you want to address with them and are willing to jump right to the hard questions when it’s appropriate. Many people spend 10, 15, or even 20 minutes “warming up” the meeting with basic information questions that you can usually get from prior research on your own. Today’s business climate is going to have the other side of the table checking their email and phones before you’re done warming the room up at that pace. Say hello, and get your pleasantries done as quickly as you feel necessary. Then, get right into solving their problem. Show them how you can help as quickly as you can.

The final ingredient is courage. These are often going to be questions that will lead to uncomfortable answers for your client. Be courageous enough to ask them anyway, and be supportive enough that they know the answers will only benefit them long term. We are taught from an early age to not offend or bother people with tough questions, but if you want to bring the best value to your clients, you’ll have to set yourself apart by your willingness to do so. Courage and transparency are the two sides of the interaction that have to match up for real success.

Master these skills and you’ll find yourself a real master of asking questions – and getting the answers you need to be successful.

Luckily, we’ve put together a list of some of our favorite resources for building your personal brand. Take a peek through our list, and share any others you’d recommend!

1. The 10-Step Personal Branding Worksheet

This worksheet will walk you through ten questions to get your wheels spinning about your personal brand.

2. 15 Questions to Discover Your Personal Mission

This questionnaire helps you get to the core of your personal purpose or mission in life.

3. Personal Core Values

Verbalizing your personal values will help you describe yourself in job interviews, bios, social conversations, and more. You can use this long list of values as a starting point. What are some of your core beliefs or things you pride yourself in? What qualities are you looking for in a job or career?

4. StrengthsFinder

The StrengthsFinder test identifies your top strengths, along with tips on how to leverage them at work and in team settings.

5. Personal Branding 101: How to Discover and Create Your Brand

This blog post from Mashable shares 10 tips on how to walk yourself through the personal branding process.

6. Forty’s 20 brand archetypes

Find inspiration and guidance for your brand by discovering which archetype you are.

7. “Crush It!” by Gary Vaynerchuk

Vaynerchuk has found fame with his outspoken (and often foul-mouthed) persona. In this book, he shares how to build a business around your personal brand.

8. “Business Model You” by Timothy Clark, Alexander Osterwalder, and Yves Pigneur

“Business Model You” teaches you how to reveal new ways your skills can be useful and discover more fulfilling career and life possibilities.

9. “The Brand You 50: Fifty Ways to Transform Yourself from an ‘Employee’ into a Brand That Shouts Distinction, Commitment, and Passion!” by Tom Peters

The super long title says it all ;-)

What other resources have you found helpful in developing your brand? Leave a comment, and let us know!

Lots of companies find themselves in a conundrum where they’ve been in business for a few years and established a strong brand, but something has made them wonder whether they should change their name. Maybe it’s a PR crisis. Maybe their current name is confusing or not doing them justice. Maybe they merged with another company and don’t know which name to keep.

Either way, it seems terrifying and awkward to change your name. Will my old/current customers know who I am? What about all the legal implications? Will people be confused? There are so many things to consider when making this decision, but a few companies have braved the waters and thrived because of it.

There are several examples of big corporations that (for better or for worse) have changed their name, but today I got an email about a small business that got it right.

Photography is one of those tricky industries when it comes to branding. Everyone looks and sounds the same. Each new business owner does the same thing that their peers are doing because it seems to work, and they’re scared to do anything too different. The problem is that the average customer can’t tell anyone apart, so they’re left confused and unimpressed.

Luckily, Ryan and Denise Gotcher, a husband and wife who have a wedding photography business in Arizona, seem to “get it.” (Yes, this story has a personal tie – they took pictures at my wedding – but nonetheless, I think they’re a great example of a good case study for changing your company name.)

Ryan and Denise own a business called Simply Knot Photography. They’ve been in business for a few years, have a solid client base, and have grown the business quite a bit. But after a few years, they started realizing the name just wasn’t working. People weren’t understanding it when they said it out loud (“Simply Not?? Ooooh k-n-o-t! Like tying the knot – I get it!”), and they were referring their friends to “Ryan and Denise” not “Simply Knot.”

Normally, I’m not a huge fan of mixing your personal name and company name. After all, what if someone besides you ends up running the business someday? What if you decide to sell it or no longer want to be the face of the company? But with Ryan and Denise, it just makes sense. I love their explanation for why they decided to make the change:

“We ARE our business. When our couples and favorite vendors talk about us, they say, ‘You have to check out Ryan & Denise! Oh yeah, and their website is Simply Knot Photography.’ When we launched our ShowIt website back in April 2011, one of our main goals was to make our branding more about US. When we started out, we kinda thought that people were booking us because we were good photographers. What we didn’t see at the time was that when you’re a bride looking for a photographer, everybody’s website starts to look the same to you, even if some photos are better than others. What stands out about us is who WE are. When people connect with us as people and as a couple, they are much more likely to remember us and think about what it would be like to have US as a part of their wedding day. Over the last year, we’ve accomplished what we set out to do with our brand. Making the leap to Ryan & Denise Photography brings this transition full circle.”

So kudos to you, Ryan and Denise! You guys are great role models for embracing the human side of your business. I admire the thought process that went into your decision and the guts it takes to actually go through with it.

For more background on their transition to the new name, check out their announcement here.

Lend an ear to this recording for highlights of our conversation with Lane and Thor about the book, their advice on how to make serendipity work for you, what it means to have a “geek brain,” and why failing fast is awesome (as long as you’re not a pilot).

To learn more about “Get Lucky,” visit getluckythebook.com to download a chapter for free.

Here are some highlights from the interview:

Lane on why he and Thor decided to write “Get Lucky:”

“Thor and I go way back. We have a company together (actually one that comes up in the book a lot) called Get Satisfaction, which is a company that provides customer service communities to businesses. It gets used by two-person startups, Proctor & Gamble, and everything in the middle. When we say ‘customer service community’ we mean it’s a tool that allows your customers to interact in a public forum with each other and with employees of the business in order to ask questions, solve problems, share ideas they might have for the company’s products or services, or different ways to use it. The product has these two benefits: one is to get your customers to know each other, get them more invested in you and your product. At the same time, it’s really good at helping companies defray customer service costs because every question that your customers answer is another question your customer service team doesn’t have to.

We started that company in 2007. We’d known each other for a couple of years before that. We’ve both done a bunch of different startups. Thor can speak for himself, but for me at least, writing a book was about not starting another company anytime soon.”

Thor on the difference between serendipity and luck:

“We actually mean something specific when we say ‘luck.’ There’s blind luck, and sometimes, lightening does strike. But that’s usually not what’s going on.

Serendipity has a specific meaning. It means when you’re looking for one thing, and you find something else. By looking for one thing, you’re exerting some kind of effort. You have a readiness of mind to find something. But usually, the problem is that serendipity is commonly used among entrepreneurs. Most startups would admit they stumbled on their idea, or they had another idea but what ended up working was something quite different. Entrepreneurs are naturally good at this. The problem is that big companies who all say they want to be more entrepreneurial, all of their methods, practices, and ways they organize their company all work against that. They have plans and want everyone to commit to that plan, and by having that plan they give everyone tunnel vision. What we want to allow is for companies of all sizes to be more adaptive and more entrepreneurial.”

Thor on the three parts of planned serendipity:

“1. Allow chance to happen in your life more. Take down the cubicles, and let more random collisions kick in.

2. Be able to pattern match or make connections between things that are not obviously connected.

3. Be able to take action on those chance discoveries that occur because of those connections.”

Lane on the “geek brain:”

“The subtitle of the chapter on preparation is actually ‘Anatomy of a Geek Brain.’ It’s not about geek in the traditional sense, where it’s someone who’s in technology or who’s a hacker. It’s any kind of geek or anyone who obsesses over something and is sort of geeky about it.

What’s so interesting is that when you start to look into the mindset of people who are like that, it makes sense in a counterintuitive sort of way. But when you look at someone who’s obsessive about a topic, being obsessive doesn’t mean being content. Someone who is obsessive about a topic (like sports) is always looking for something new or unexpected. They’re always admitting they don’t actually know everything about that topic, which is how they’re able to be open and receptive and see new things all the time. Being a geek is always admitting what you don’t know, not focusing on what you do know because you’re always seeking out new information, new experiences, and new opportunities.”

Lane on ways to put planned serendipity to work:

“Thor mentioned earlier that there are these three parts to serendipity: the ability to put yourself in front of new experiences, your ability to see serendipitous experiences when they happen, and your ability to act on them. Those three abilities are split across four skills. They’re the first four of our eight core skills of serendipity. They are the things you need to be able to do in order to experience serendipity.

The first skill is called motion. Motion is the raw material for serendipity. You can’t experience serendipity if you’re not putting yourself in the position to experience new things. You can’t stumble across something unexpected if you’re not putting yourself in a place where those unexpected things might be. Most of business life is about routine. You go in, you go to your office, you sit in the same place, you see the same people, you do the same things every day. Routine and process and control are no friend of serendipity.

Motion is the skill of breaking out of that routine and doing different things. Motion is basically new experiences in familiar environments.

A conference is a great example of that. You’ve gone to a new place with a bunch of new people but focused on a topic or in a setting that’s familiar to you. It’s an opportunity to experience new things that are highly relevant to you for whom they’re also relevant.

The second chapter is about preparation. It’s about the concept of the geek brain and the idea of being able to draw connections between things.

The third skill is divergence. The skill of divergence is the willingness and ability to act on something new. Divergence is the ability to change the plan, to do something different in response to external stimulus, to do something different in response to the serendipitous opportunity that showed up in front of you. It doesn’t matter if you find it and can see it. If you don’t do anything about it, it’s not serendipitous.

The fourth of the core skills is commitment. Commitment is all about commitment to a purpose as a business, and the willingness and ability to figure out which paths to take out of all the ones in front of you.

Commitment is far and away my favorite chapter in the book because commitment to me is having a commitment and a purpose in your business and using that to make smart business decisions and become a better business is hugely important. It’s a place where a lot of businesses fall down because we think having a purpose is about doing social good or doing something that’s disconnected from your business. But what we argue in this chapter and show example after example is having a purpose is the way to become a successful business. It’s a way to lens your decisions. It’s a way to say, ‘We created all these serendipitous opportunities, but how do we decide which ones to pick?’”

Thor on tangible things people can do to incorporate serendipity:

“One of the problems with the concept of ‘failing fast’ is that there are a lot of businesses where if you fail, people die. I don’t want my airline to fail fast. Yet, the airline industry is going through incredible changes, and they need to be able to use these skills as well.

While you may not be able to embrace divergence at the level of preparing an airplane for takeoff, you could certainly do it with your pricing model or thinking differently about how you do customer service or how you engage with customers.

A company that we talk about in the book that’s great at this is Amazon. They’ve done something really remarkable. They’ve created an entire business platform internally that allows them to spin up new businesses, whether it’s an auction company or a new media company or films on demand. They do it very quickly and can leverage shared assets on hand and see if they work. Then, if they don’t (which they often don’t), it’s dead in the water. But they took a couple paths, they branched several times, and now they have this amazing competitor to eBay in a different way.”

My inner marketer wants to go Terry Tate on them, but alas, I must compose myself and explain why that’s a bad idea.

Would you hire a kid who ran a lemonade stand to be an executive at your company? Probably not. No matter how many cups they sold or how awesome the lemonade was, it’s just a different ball game. The same goes for social media. Using Facebook or Twitter for personal use is much easier than using it for business. There’s a totally different rule book, and overlooking those rules will inevitably prevent you from seeing great results or, even worse, cause you to make a big mistake where lots of people can see it. One poorly handled situation, insensitive tweet, or off-color photo (even if it was posted innocently) can be deadly.

There are countless examples – PayPal, Red Cross, and Chrysler, just to name a few – but the lesson is the same: only give the keys to your social media castle to those who you completely trust. This should be someone that understands your company’s voice, style, and processes, and has the time to manage it. If you wouldn’t trust this person to answer the phones or be interviewed by a news station, they shouldn’t be touching your social accounts.

A lot of people are scared of social media because they think it creates problems and causes controversy. In reality, it doesn’t create issues, but it does magnify them.

Aside from protecting you from faux pas, hiring a skilled marketer who understands the complexities of social media will increase the likelihood of your success with these tools. Just because anyone can use them doesn’t mean that anyone can use them well. College kids know how to post an update, share pictures, and broadcast their message to the masses. On the other hand, they probably don’t take into account who their audience is, what their goals are, how to tailor their message accordingly, the proper ways to handle comments, how to avoid common mistakes, etc. The average person could probably get you average results. But is that all you want if you’re investing time and money into this? Don’t you want more than that?

Social media can be an amazing tool for reaching new customers, building relationships with them, and driving sales…but only if it’s in proper hands. Choose wisely!

For more where this came from, check out our tips on how to be a social media superstar.

In a massively oversaturated media environment, however, a viewer simply doesn’t have enough attention to spare for complicated logos. A bold and simple logo can cut through the crap and be seen (and remembered), but a complex logo causes the viewer’s brain to simply ignore it.

It’s a defense mechanism to preserve attention because there just isn’t time to engage with everything trying to grab our attention. The more “stuff” you put into a logo, the less it will be seen and remembered.

For this reason, a key trend in logo design is to purge any unnecessary elements. New logos are almost always simpler and cleaner than those being replaced, and many rebranding efforts are essentially just simplifications of the existing visual identity.

Clients often get frustrated with designers constantly trying to simplify things, but there are valid explanations for why customers really do respond better to strong, simple designs.

Here are some recent rebranding examples from Brand New that show how companies are really beginning to understand the dramatic and powerful effect of simplicity on customer responsiveness and engagement:

Meanwhile, most of the highest-rated rebranding initiatives from last year showed a similar awareness of the power of streamlining and simplification:

This last one, Starbucks, was one of the most noteworthy and dramatic rebranding initiatives of last year. It’s the next logical step in the company’s steady visual progression toward brand-focused simplicity.

Now, this certainly doesn’t mean that the perfect logo is just the name of the company set in Helvetica Bold. The logo still needs to represent the uniqueness and character of the brand as well as it possibly can, and it needs to offer some kind of visual interest. For example, here’s how Dulux incorporated their energetic, colorful spirit into their new logo:

This trend towards simplicity means designers need to think like poets, not novelists. Instead of using every tool Adobe Illustrator offers and trying to convey every shred of meaning possibly in the logo, it makes more sense (cognitively and practically) to pare it down to the bare minimum.

What can you do with two visual elements instead of ten? What can you do with a single color instead of an entire palette? Does that font really need an outline, a bevel, a drop shadow, and rivets?

Even though going the simple route can make you feel a little naked (like you forgot to put on pants this morning), it makes complete sense when trying to of create a remarkable, memorable brand experience that will cut through the crap and get noticed by your target audience.

It’s really tempting to speak to your customers in the same way you speak to people inside your industry. Most of the time, we don’t even realize we’re doing it. However, this is one of the quickest ways to lose your customers. Since we’re so inundated with marketing messages and ads, if someone doesn’t understand what you’re saying within a second or two, they move on.

Jargon isn’t always bad, but you should only use it when it makes sense for your audience and purpose. That’s why it’s crucial to remember that you are not your target audience. Instead, think about what would make sense to a customer.

Here are six ways to speak your customer’s language and describe your product or service in their terms:

1. Share your message with a friend who is in a completely different industry, and have them tell you what they think you mean.
2. Delete any cliches, industry terms, slang, etc., and replace them with exactly what you’re trying to say.
3. Spell out or describe any acronyms. Avoid alphabet soup! (Oops, we’re deleting jargon. I mean unnecessarily using acronyms!)
4. Think about how you would tell someone at a bar or social event about this product/service.
5. Ask a six year old how they would say it. (Yes, I’m serious. Kids are an underutilized source for measuring if something is too complex. Check out this video on branding from a 5-year-old’s perspective.)
6. Don’t talk. Just listen! How do your customers talk to you and with each other about your company? What words and phrases do they use to describe what you do?

These tips will put you on the road to de-jargonizing and re-humanizing. How do you put yourself in your customers’ shoes?

1. Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel Pink
Recommended by Chris

This book explores the real reason why people do things and explores the hidden motivations that you don’t even know you have. It is a great exploration for anyone who wants to learn more about managing or dealing with people.

2. EntreLeadership by Dave Ramsey
Recommended by David, Katie and Melissa

Entreleadership is a great tool for inspiring leaders to create an open and valuable company culture through leading by example. At the core, it teaches that to be a great leader, you must become a servant to your team. The best leaders support, encourage, empathize, and lead from the bottom-up, and this book shows how Dave Ramsey does this daily in his company.

3. Power of a Positive No by William Ury
Recommended by Melissa and Amy

The Power of a Positive No demonstrates how to uncover your bigger “yes,” make it clear to people what your “no” is, and how to preserve the relationship along the way. It explains how to be empowered by determining your Plan B and avoiding reactive behavior influenced by resistance from the other party.

4. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini
Recommended by Amy and Melissa

Packed with fascinating accounts of experiments and research, Influence explains the principles behind persuasion. If you’ve ever bought something or committed to something that you later regretted, read this to learn what techniques are responsible.

5. Crush it! by Gary Vaynerchuk
Recommended by Melissa

Although this book is marketed as a how-to manual for turning your passion into a business, the true value I found in it was Gary Vee’s first-hand insight into the immense value of building and maintaining a strong personal brand.

6. Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time by Keith Ferrazzi
Recommended by Chris

This book is great for anyone in sales or client relations, as it reminds you how the human touch works and what it can do for you and your business.

7. Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh
Recommended by Melissa

Delivering Happiness is the true tale of how Zappos built an incredible company culture based on service that translated to an extraordinary customer experience.

8. Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner
Recommended by Amy, Melissa, and Shaina

Freakonomics uses the principles of economics to dive deep into psychology, pop culture, motivation,sociology, and a ton of other topics that are normally overly scientific and dry. It makes you look at the world differently and gives you a glimpse into the human psyche in an engaging, entertaining way.

9. Blink by Malcolm Gladwell
Recommended by Melissa

Gladwell’s Blink may get less attention than “The Tipping Point” and “Outliers,” but it’s a quick read that explains how our brains unconsciously make decisions before we even know we’ve made them, as well as how our instinct-based decisions are often more on-point than we initially give them credit for.

10. The Designful Company by Marty Neumeier
Recommended by Melissa

In The Designful Company, Neumeier explains how the idea that design thinking should be the core of every modern business. He asserts that design thinking should transcend the design department and permeate all levels of a company as a problem-solving and decision-making skill.

11. Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
Recommended by Chris and David

This book offers valuable insight into the real story behind one of the great innovators and entrepreneurs of our era. It presents lessons that any business owner can put to work first thing Monday morning.

12. Start With Why by Simon Sinek

Truth be told none of us have read this yet, but with statements like “People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it,” this book made a beeline to most of our reading lists for this year, and we just had to share it with you!

What books are you hoping to read this year? We’d love to hear your suggestions and add ‘em to our own reading lists!

– Bob Wiley, What About Bob? (1991)

The cornerstone of all improvised theater is the almighty two-person scene. In these scenes, it’s critical that both performers immediately establish who their characters are, how they know each other, and what they need out of the scene. The earlier they figure that out, the more time it gives them (and the audience and the other performers in the troupe) to enjoy the complexity of the scene’s relationships, ideas, and environments. It makes for more interesting improv, and everyone has a ton of fun.

The most amazing improv I’ve ever seen in my life was a two-person show with T.J. and Pete (remember those awesome Sonic commercials?) at the Phoenix Improv Festival in 2008. They were completely committed to their characters, they supported and played off each other perfectly, they knew exactly what the other guy was thinking and trusted the scene to help them find their way. They put on a clinic. It was brilliant.

On the other hand, some of the worst scenes I’ve seen show up when one person makes a cardinal improv no-no: he insists that he has the better idea, the more powerful or funnier choice, or the right idea. He’s trying to drive the scene, but it’s not an effective way to lead. There are so many elements that determine the scene’s success that are outside his control – his stage partners, their ideas of what the scene is all about, the stage, the lights, that one guy in the audience that keeps coughing…trying to control the uncontrollable is a surefire recipe for disappointment.

Collaborating with a client is just like an improv scene. Both partners enter the scene with little to no idea of what’s going to happen. Then, someone has to initiate. One partner makes a statement based on broad assumptions and puts herself out there to see how the other person responds. They’re figuring each other out throughout the scene, doing the delicate dance to heighten the story, and adding to the relationship one line or action at a time. During a project, neither the client nor the project team know exactly how the scene will end or how they’ll get there. All they have is hope for cooperation, acceptance, and group mind, a plan for where they want the story to go (which will probably change 100 times), and trust that the scene will work itself out in a positive way. However, if one person in this relationship, whether it’s the client’s superstar CEO or the agency’s hotshot creative dude, tries to control the uncontrollable or refuses to accept the other’s gifts or suggestions, it’s going to be painful.

Most projects are painful, aren’t they? Every relationship can be rocky. Very few business relationships are always perfect, always accepting and “yes, anding”, and rarely do we experience group mind during a client project. And that’s OK. The more experienced and stronger improviser on stage is the one that recognizes when things are rocky and immediately moves to support their scene partners, even if their ideas aren’t exactly what they had in mind at the beginning of the scene. Even if the client’s idea for a boatload of neon colors is a terrible idea, the stronger performer in the scene is the one that can turn those neon colors into something amazing and make the client look brilliant.

How can we designers, copywriters, and marketers find a way to make our client’s ideas look brilliant and amazing, even if we didn’t start out on the same page at the beginning of our project? Some clients are quicker to trust and rely on our expertise, but for the ones that insist on controlling or art directing the project, do you agree that the role of the “stronger” contributor is to accept and support the client even if their ideas aren’t all that interesting?

On the other side of the spectrum, startups and micro-businesses view marketing as a matter of survival, not theory: their business will disappear if they don’t invest in it.

Between those two extremes, however, an interesting thing often happens: companies forget about marketing. Once a company gets past a few million dollars in revenue, it’s tempting to let things slide. Some of these companies stop marketing altogether.

Business is growing and everyone’s staying busy, they think, so why bother with the expense and hassle?

I’ll tell you why.

Marketing is food, not medicine

Inexperienced companies regard marketing as medicine to be taken when something is wrong. (“Not enough customers? Take some marketing and call me in the morning.”)

This is completely wrong-headed thinking, and it’s one of the reasons so many otherwise successful businesses wind up failing. They get used to feeling busy…until they realize it’s too late to start what they should have been doing all along.

Marketing is food. It’s the regular, sustained nourishment that gets your business where you want it—and keeps it there. You need it throughout the day, every day.

Peter Drucker, one of the leading experts on management theory, wrote:

Because the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two—and only two—basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs.

He also wrote:

Marketing is not only much broader than selling; it is not a specialized activity at all. It encompasses the entire business. It is the whole business seen from the point of view of its final result, that is from the customer’s point of view. Concern and responsibility for marketing must therefore permeate all areas of the enterprise.

This perspective is what keeps Fortune 500 companies so intense about sustained, well-funded marketing—even when they’re already successful by any measure.

While inexperienced businesses wait until they’re starving to start looking for nourishment, these savvy enterprises eat regular, healthy meals throughout the day, keeping them strong and thriving year after year.

Successful companies never stop marketing

Here are four common-sense reasons why the most successful companies in the world engage in vigorous, ongoing marketing efforts:

• Ongoing marketing prevents “reputation rot”: If you surveyed everyone who’s heard about your company, you’d probably find that their understanding of who you are and what you do is out of date by at least a few years. Your company is constantly improving, but people’s perceptions tend to remain fixed. Every year that passes brings them further and further out of sync, until hardly anyone actually understands what your company has become. It takes years to shape and define your reputation, so you need to be doing it all the time. You can’t wait until it’s hopelessly out of sync, and only then start the arduous process of convincing everyone you’ve changed. (If you do, you’ll never make it to the other side.)
• Ongoing marketing shapes your customer base: As your company evolves, your company will need to target different audiences. Sometimes your focus changes only slightly, and other times you have to start with a completely new customer base. Either way, you need to be constantly evaluating your target and adjusting your messaging, visuals, and strategy according.
• Ongoing marketing gives you lots of options: Having “just enough” business isn’t enough. If you’re actively marketing, there should always be more demand for your offering than you can actually meet. This gives you the option to pick and choose your customers, to focus on the most profitable (or most enjoyable) ones, and to have a waiting list ready for when times get slower.
• Ongoing marketing secures your company’s future: The single most important reason for engaging in active, ongoing marketing is simply that it secures your company’s future. Marketing creates business. You may have lots going on right now, but will it still be there in six months? A year? Three years? Savvy business owners don’t leave their future up to chance; they’re planting seeds now they can harvest next season.

If your company currently has lots of work, happy customers, and a busy staff, then you’ve successfully achieved a key milestone in the life of a business: viability. This isn’t the end of your journey, though, but the beginning — and marketing will be your constant companion at every step you take from here on out.

Since Sinek is the leader of a movement aimed at challenging people to find their “why,” I was surprised and intrigued when I saw his recent video about a time when he lost his sense of purpose.

He traveled to Afghanistan on a military visit and found himself in the middle of an attack at the base. Instead of feeling inspired by what he saw and having the urge to help out (as he thought he would feel), he freaked out. Although Sinek is typically a nice and sympathetic guy, he became rude, selfish, and did whatever he could to get out of there, even if it meant offending people or putting himself before those in need. He couldn’t figure out why he had plunged into this dark and nasty place, but then he realized: he had lost sight of his purpose.

Upon this realization, he decided to turn that train around. He reconnected with his purpose—to serve those who serve others—and instantly felt at peace. He got to work and spent the rest of his mission volunteering and doing whatever he could to lend a hand.

Another profound point Sinek makes is about leadership (fast forward to 16:10 if you want to see this part). He says, “The cost of leadership is self-interest…You are not a leader because you own a company. You are not a leader because everyone reports to you. You are not even a leader because you make tons of money. You’re a leader when you decide the people you serve are your employees.” He tells a story about an inspiring conversation he had with a military General. When he asked the General why the Marines are such a remarkable organization, he responded with three short words—“Officers eat last.” He meant that officers eat after all of their soldiers, demonstrating the respect and appreciation they have for their troops.

Sinek’s main point with this story: “If you want your employees to be completely devoted to you and your cause, you have to be completely devoted to them.” He says that great leaders look after their people, put them first, and demonstrate the deeper purpose. This also relates to customers, not just employees. Sinek encourages us to avoid distinguishing between customers and employees. They’re all human beings and should be treated as such.

Powerful words from a powerful speaker that serve as a reminder to stay in touch with your “why” and always be a champion for the people you cherish most.

Let’s say a patient comes into the emergency room bleeding uncontrollably. The doctor’s first task is to stabilize the patient and take care of his immediate needs. But then, the doctor is going to start trying to figure out why the patient is bleeding and how to fix it so he’s a healthy, functioning man again.

Now, let’s say that bleeding patient is a struggling company. They used to be healthy, but now their loyal customers are coming less and less, they aren’t seeing as many new customers, and they need to figure out why they’re “sick.” It would be helpful to “stop the bleeding” by implementing a temporary solution, but just giving them a short-term band aid isn’t going to solve the long-term problem.

Many companies want to rush to the final solution. They want to skip all the soul searching, research, brand development or strengthening, and strategy, and just jump ahead to execution. Along with all the consequences of rushing, it’s just a waste. We can skip all the conceptual stuff, forget about doing our homework, go full steam ahead, and the end product will still be pretty good. However, it probably won’t be as deep or effective as it could be, and you’ll probably have to redo some of it in the future (or just ditch it completely). It will just be a band aid, when you really needed to get to the root of the problem and find the real cure.

So next time you’re tempted to skip the tough stuff or the things you don’t see much value in, resist the urge and remember to start where it matters—the beginning.

This led me to explore the idea of a basic style guide. I’ve read about web style guides in the past, but I always understood them to be large, complex documents created at the end of the design phase to pass off to developers. Totally intimidating. Plus, this didn’t solve my problem of keeping my own design direction in order along the way.

So with a recent web design project I spent some time mapping out what the different markup tags would be (based on the sketches) and what characteristics those tags would have. I did this before I even created the first layout file. I wouldn’t guess that determining the styles before even beginning the mockup would work very well, but I was pleasantly surprised!

What I found was that by solving all of the different type styles that I could identify from the sketches, there was less decision making on the fly with each individual mockup. This led to more consistent layouts from one section to the next. And happier future-me.

Sample web typography style guide

The developer, Jeremy, was happy with this new step as well. Instead of scouring the mockups for common font styles (and guessing when they were mis-matched slightly) they were all mapped out in one place.

I posed this idea on Twitter:

“Developers: How much would a web typography style guide help when developing? Main goal is to reduce the many different styles in mockups.”

The response was positive:

@claytonlz said that the guide would help a lot during development, even more if developers didn’t have to do much to make it work. He and @markng also said that understanding the purpose and intent of the guide is important, referencing the Twitter Bootstrap CSS documentation.

@jerrythepunkrat mentioned that his team creates a UI style kit on web projects, including HTML/CSS for the typography, forms, and buttons. For naming these items, he suggested conventions such as “has-gradient” or “big-search-btn”.

What are ideas you guys have for managing the many styles that are established throughout the course of designing a website? Also, I’d love to hear any thoughts on how to convey the purpose and intent of the guide.

Marketing is sales, and sales is marketing. Together they are more powerful than apart, much less if they are combative.

The argument that sales is more one-to-one and direct as opposed to marketing’s one-to-many relationship is valid – however flawed. The fact is you are still dealing with the most important thing in the world to your business: your clients and your extended network. Without those clients and prospects, you won’t be in business much longer. Both teams should have the same goal – more and better customers.

If both sides of this war worked closer together and started working with the same goal in mind, there wouldn’t need to be a sales team and a marketing team. There will be a team that is responsible for getting your prospects and clients into and through your sales process. Are there different skill sets involved? Certainly. But there are different skill sets on your hometown football team, but they are all part of the same team. The quarterback won’t be out there stopping a running back, and the linebackers aren’t throwing Hail Mary’s downfield.

Get rid of the enemies outside of your department or on the other side of the office, and start having your sales team use some of the marketing team’s talent and strategies to broaden their skills and look at the long-term play. Start your marketing guys down the path of working on the right steps to create action like your sales team. Eventually, you’ll have your teams collaborating, cross-pollinating, and communicating as one unit.

If you want to hear more conversation about this check out when Forty’s own James Archer joined me on the Don’t Sell Me Bro Podcast where we talked about this and more.

No matter how good of a designer or agency you hire to build it, your website (or social media, or mobile ads, or any other marketing tactic) is not a silver bullet. Your work is not done the day it goes live. If anything, it’s just starting. After the site launches, there’s testing, debugging, rewriting, design tweaks, additional features, Phase 2, 3, and 4, SEO, marketing, advertising, communicating…you get the point. It’s a constant work in progress. Like many other parts of marketing and branding, your website should be part of a larger puzzle, with lots of pieces fitting together to make a beautiful work of art (or a successful business, in your case). You need a holistic approach and a serious investment of time, money, and effort to make things happen. It’s more risky and difficult than it seems (“It’s a website! How hard can it be?”), but the biggest payoffs usually are.

So, next time you think to yourself, “I need a website” or hear someone else say the same thing, ask, “Why?” Then, ask it again. And again. And again. You’ll probably discover that what you’re trying to accomplish is a whole lot bigger.

In our last installment, we gave you a little background on some common social media fails, along with five ways to avoid them. Here are some additional tips to help you along on your road to social media stardom:

6. Take numbers with a grain of salt. 100 engaged fans are better than 10,000 fans who have no idea who you are or what you do. Focusing too heavily on metrics can lead to short-term thinking and short-sighted decisions. It’s not, “How can I get more followers?” The better question is, “How can I find more relevant followers?”

7. Beware of the common traps. Here are just a few no-nos: sending automatic messages, using social media as just another channel to push your message, posting about too much personal stuff (especially if you’re an organization and not an individual), retweeting lots of posts that mention or compliment you, spamming your followers with irrelevant or high-volume content, and other self-destructive mistakes.

8. Try to reply to all comments, regardless of their nature. If someone comments positively, it’s polite to reply with appreciation or an additional thought to make them feel valuable and heard. If it’s a complaint or negative comment, address the issue quickly to show you’re listening and you care.

9. Be careful who you trust. Only give the keys to your social media castle to those who you completely trust. This should be someone that understands your company’s voice, style, and processes, and has the time to manage it. If you wouldn’t trust this person to answer the phones or be interviewed by a news station, they shouldn’t be touching your social accounts.

10. Integrate social media into your other marketing efforts. Do you have an email newsletter? Add social sharing features to it, and feature similar content on your social media networks to reinforce the message. Are you participating in or sponsoring an event sometime soon? Have a promotion where someone can tweet about your company and be entered to win a prize.

With these tools under your belt and a team of experts rooting you on (ahem, that’s us!), you should be ready to take the social media world by storm. If you want more advice on how to incorporate these tips into your marketing efforts, give us a call!

Since we live in a world with such fast-changing technology, there’s always a new marketing tool at your disposal. Social media is one such tool that has opened up an entirely new channel for businesses to build a fan base and promote their companies. When used properly, it can help you reach new customers, convince them to take action, and keep that relationship strong so they come back in the future. While it’s been a source of inspiring successes for many businesses, it’s also been a major letdown for companies who don’t understand that social media is a tactic, not a strategy.

Countless business owners wake up every morning and say to themselves, “I think I should join Facebook today!” or “I have a great idea. Let’s start tweeting!” Their intentions are good, and the motivation is commendable. But, many of them fail to take the time to learn the ropes and develop a cohesive plan for their social media efforts. They get so excited that they create accounts on every network, and then either let them sit dormant or toss the keys to the new intern since “she knows how to use that stuff.” These are two of the most common errors we see. Big mistake…huge.

Using social media as part of a comprehensive marketing strategy can yield great results. However, creating a profile won’t cause people to come running in your doors. Your efforts will be futile unless you give social media the thought, time, and attention it requires. Here are some tips on how to be a social media superstar:

1. Work on building the foundations of your brand before jumping into execution. This should include (at a minimum) developing your purpose, values, and style. It’s also helpful to do some additional research on what your audience is looking for from you (deals? advice? entertainment?), as well as what your competition is doing, in order to craft your messages appropriately.

2. Position yourself. Who are you? What do you do? Who do you do it for? What makes you different? (This will be useful for your profile description too.)

3. Establish goals. Think about what you’re hoping to accomplish with your marketing efforts and how social media can help you achieve those goals. Then, ask yourself “why” questions about your plans: Why are you doing this? Why should someone follow you? What do they hope to see from you? Why should they care?

4. Make a plan, Stan. The more you plan ahead, the easier it will be to manage your social media efforts. This plan can be as simple as brainstorming content ideas, or more complex with a full editorial plan with content, a calendar or schedule for posting, and a outline of each person’s responsibilities, etc.

5. Focus, focus, focus! Stick to your positioning, and make sure the majority of the content you’re posting can be tied back to your goals. It’s fun to add some variety or random fun posts here and there, but if someone is following you because you promised them X, they’ll be frustrated if all you post about is A, R, Z, and Q.

Love these tips? Check out Part 2 of this list to arm yourself with even more tricks of the trade. If you can’t wait another moment and want to discuss your social media plans, let’s chat today.

Our beloved group chat/IM app, HipChat, announced they are changing their pricing, which may mean an increase for some of its users. And guess what happened. No angry emails or tweets (at least none that I’ve seen), no rioting in the streets, no mass unsubscribing. They were even praised! Yes, praised! Hard to believe, right? In the wake of Netflix’s epic fail with price increases and the introduction of Qwikster, I was starting to think some of the brands I love were completely clueless about customer experience and effective communication.

But, HipChat renewed my confidence and set an example their peers and brands of all sizes should follow. Like many companies, HipChat started gaining popularity quickly and grew out of their original pricing model. Normally, that would suck for the original users, but we all know it happens and we’re happy for their success. The part that really puts salt in the wound is when the company institutes massive price increases across the board or completely changes their business model based on what’s good for the company, not what’s good for their customers. To make matters worse, they usually announce it 20 seconds before it goes live through a dry, robotic email. And then, they expect you to be totally ok with it and go on using their product or service for the next 100 years.

HipChat seems delightfully aware of this “typical situation,” and they chose to take a higher road. They started by sending a nice, semi-personal email from Pete, the founder of HipChat. There wasn’t a fancy template or a flashy design. Just a regular ol’ email from a regular ol’ guy. He was friendly, to-the-point, and reassuring, and he directed me to a blog post with all the details.

The blog post was glorious. It was short, direct, and felt like I was just talking to a friend. They gave a little background on the situation to let me know why they decided to make some price modifications and shared why the current system just doesn’t work anymore. Then, they described the changes in under 30 words. No long-winded or convoluted paragraphs filled with jargon. Just four little bullet points telling me exactly what’s happening. Finally, HipChat told me exactly when the changes would take effect (not for another two weeks so I have time to plan) and what I need to do (nothing for the vast majority of users). The cherry on top is that these changes may actually make it cheaper for current paying customers to use their service. Not bad, huh?

At the end of the post, I wasn’t angry or wanting to call the CEO and give him a piece of my mind about their horrific communication. I was happy and impressed…so impressed that I wrote an email back to Pete (which was so easy since the original email was from him!) and commended them on a job well done.

So, HipChat, this is my open letter of kudos to you. Your ability to speak human and keep your customer in mind doesn’t go unnoticed, and I hope others will take notes.

A marketing plan is a document that outlines your current market position, marketing goals, and how you’re going to achieve them.

The marketing plan is the bridge between strategy and execution. There’s lots of different information you can include in this plan, but there are a few key items that should be covered:

1. Business overview

Summarize the research and discovery work you’ve done for your company here. This section could include highlights of your history, leadership, revenue, employees, overall business goals, and specific marketing goals (if they’re different than the overall ones).

2. Competition

Looking at your competition is one of the most important steps when developing your marketing because it allows you to identify what’s normal in your industry and creative ways to stand out. Make sure to research your competitor’s positioning, visual appearance (website, marketing materials, physical location, etc.), messaging, customer experience, and industry standards.

3. Positioning

Once you know what your competitors are doing, you can make an informed decision about how to position your company. It’s impossible to be everything to everyone, so be as specific as possible. Think about your products or services, the benefits you provide, your specific target audience, and one or two things that make you unique and better from your competitors (remember to stay away from the defaults). It also may be helpful to brainstorm some talking points as a guide for talking about your business with others, do a SWOT analysis, and gather ways you can prove your claims (e.g., testimonials, facts, and figures).

4. Branding

Before diving into executing your plan, it’s crucial to do your homework and put some foundational pieces in place. At a minimum, this includes the 3 essential elements, a verbal style, and a visual identity. You can also incorporate more in-depth elements, such as a brand metaphor, guidelines for the customer experience, and an internal alignment plan.

5. Audience

It’s tempting to skip this step since many of us think we know exactly who our customers are. However, making assumptions or taking action based on incorrect information could result in a huge waste of time and money. Think about each of your target audiences, and get a mental picture of who they are. How old are they? What do they do for work? What’s their family like? What problems are they looking to you to solve? How do they make decisions? (See Amy’s video on decision modes for more help on that.) This information will help you craft the right strategy and message.

6. Budget

Now that you have all the necessary background information, you can start thinking about the specifics of your marketing campaign. Marketing costs can range from free to millions of dollars, so setting a budget will give you a good place to start. While budgets vary depending on industry, size, goals, etc., a standard rule of thumb is a growing business should be allocating 5-10% of revenue to marketing and advertising efforts.

7. Marketing ideas

This is where it gets fun! You’ve probably done a lot of brainstorming about all the places you could possibly advertise and promote your company. Narrow down all the options to the ideas that make the most sense for your budget, goals, and timeline. This plan doesn’t have to have every little detail about where and when you’re going to advertise, but it’s helpful to document some general tactics, such as content marketing, advertising (print, online, outdoor, event, etc.), social media, public relations, and more. (Check out our 40 Creative Marketing Ideas workbook for help with this part!)

8. Messaging

So, you’ve decided where you’re going to advertise, but now, what will you say? Identify the 2-3 key points or promotions you want to convey to your audience, and stick to those. We all fall prey to wanting to tell people everything under the sun about our companies, but that can be confusing and overwhelming. Hone in on the things that matter most to them, not you.

9. Measurements

When possible, it’s important to measure the results of your marketing efforts. Some channels are easier to measure than others, and numbers don’t necessarily tell the whole story. However, they can give you a general idea of what’s working and what’s not. Identifying some ideas for measuring your campaign’s effectiveness will help keep you accountable later.

It may seem complicated, but it’s actually quite simple. A marketing plan comes back to the good ‘ol “who, what, where, when, why, and how” planning method. With a solid plan and motivated team in place, you have all the right tools to make your marketing a success.

If you need help putting your own plan together or have other suggestions on what to include, let’s chat!

My relationship with my own money is usually played out in front of a screen. I spend a lot of time in front of our family budget spreadsheet, and sometimes I’m on my bank’s website or at an ATM, where I also interact with my money on screens. It’s a virtual relationship and I’m certainly not “in love” with my money. Occasionally I “spend money” by swiping a plastic debit card somewhere. Every once in a while I write on a piece of paper called a “check” to indicate that I am paying someone for something. It’s even more rare for me to touch and feel actual paper money and coins that I hand over to someone else in exchange for something I value.

It’s almost like money itself doesn’t really exist. It’s always just “out there” in some kind of an electronic neverland that probably resembles the set of Yo Gabba Gabba!.

It’s strange, but money really has become more of an idea than it is a real, tangible thing… And, if you’re like me, you like the thought of having more of this particular idea. You want those numbers to be bigger, have more digits, and maybe a comma (or two or three (yeah right)) in between them.

I’m guessing that the majority of us in business would agree that profit isn’t a bad thing, and we would all agree that businesses need to make money in order to stay in business. Money itself isn’t inherently good or bad. It can be used for plenty of good, like supporting families, paying the bills, and rewarding people who make a positive impact in our lives or the lives of others. It can also be used for lots of evil too, mind you.

However, it’s hard for me not to feel like many people in business are bound by this concept of money, instead of freely living to do more good for more people.

The problem is a lack of focus. Our focus can never be solely on the numbers themselves. We should never forget that all those numbers on a screen always need to be connected back to humans – real people living out their lives. We are put here on this earth to do good for others, to use our gifts and talents to serve other human beings. THAT’S where our money comes from. How quickly we can forget that money is a result of people saying ‘thank you’ to each other for a job well done!

Our role at Forty is to make sure that companies are doing the right things to connect with people on a human level. We want to help businesses communicate the good that they are doing in a way that gets people excited about their work. When more people are genuinely interested and excited about a company, that company will make more money to do more good for more people.

How does your company stay focused on people instead of numbers?

*photo credit – Martin Weller

Our first term: content marketing.

While content marketing is built on principles that have been around for years, it has just started to congeal and come into the spotlight over the last few years.

Here are a few definitions of content marketing floating around the interwebs:

• “Provides consumers with useful information to aid purchase decisions, improve product usage and entertain them while achieving organizational goals without being overtly promotional” – Heidi Cohen, Riverside Marketing Strategies
• “Aligning business and consumer information needs with content” – Lee Odden, Online Marketing Blog
• “An umbrella term encompassing all marketing formats that involve the creation or sharing of content for the purpose of engaging current and potential consumer bases. Content marketing subscribes to the notion that delivering high-quality, relevant and valuable information to prospects and customers drives profitable consumer action.” – Wikipedia
• “A way of engaging and attracting existing and potential customers through content creation” – Dan Bergeron, Likeable Media
• “Anything a company creates and shares to tell their story” – C.C. Chapman, Content Rules

This article by Heidi Cohen has 21 more definitions if you want to see just how varied they can be.

At the end of the day, it all comes back to the same concept: Content marketing is creating, curating, and delivering helpful information for customers in order to reach your business goals.

It’s the “new” way of marketing. Old school marketing and advertising was push, push, push. It was fraught with in-your-face ads, door-to-door salesmen, and generic messaging. Content marketing is pull, pull, pull. It’s about presenting your potential customers with meaningful, relevant, and engaging information that starts a conversation and softly piques their interest in your company. It’s capturing their attention without shoving it down their throat.

Simply put, content marketing is a romantic courtship, while traditional advertising is a creepy guy hitting on you at the bar.

This content can come in many shapes and forms, including social media posts, blogs, pictures, videos, testimonials, infographics, slideshows, podcasts, screencasts, case studies…the list is endless. These things aren’t just filler for your website, they’re your ammunition.

Once you’re armed with a powerful content strategy, you’ll open a whole new world (cue Aladdin music) of building relationships and driving sales for your company.

If you’re curious about content marketing or want help building a strategy for your business, get in touch with us today. <—- See what I did there? Content marketing in action ;-)

Step 1: Your team gets in a room and starts jotting down lots of ideas.
Step 2. You narrow it down to the few choices that stand out or make the most sense.
Step 3. You choose the “best” idea and conclude this a “successful” brainstorming session.

Sounds familiar, right? Most of us experience this process so often in all aspects of our lives that it’s second nature. In fact, we’re so used to it that we frequently forget to do anything more than the bare minimum to get to that golden idea. Once we find something that clicks and everyone nods their head in agreement, we pat ourselves on the back and call it a day. What would happen if we pushed a little deeper? What if we did one pass of brainstorming, then completely scrapped it and started over (or at least picked a few favorite ideas and kept going)?

It sounds like a lot of work – and it can be – but the results can be remarkable. The first ideas that come to mind are usually the obvious ones. They may be good thoughts, but they’re probably the ones that anyone could think of. The ones that have been done before. The ones your client is paying you to get *past*. When you flush out all the easy answers and keep digging deeper, you get to the real meat – the ideas that are original, memorable, and differentiate you from everyone else who settled at Step 3.

For example, let’s say we’re playing Name 10 Things, a favorite Forty game. In this improv exercise, someone gives you a topic, and you have to name ten things about that topic as quickly as you can. There are no wrong answers, so your goal is to get through the list ASAP without worrying about being embarrassed or having the correct response. If my challenge was “Name 10 things that are awesome about the beach,” my answers may look something like this:

1. Getting a tan
2. Feeling the sand in my toes
3. Swimming in the waves
4. Surfing
5. Building sand castles
6. People watching
7. Playing crazy games of frisbee with the dog
8. Burying people in the sand
9. Using my metal detector to find buried treasures
10. Watching lifeguards reenact Baywatch

When we name ten things, the most interesting answers typically don’t reveal themselves until the last three or four items.

We employ this “reach deeper” brainstorming philosophy in our work and have found that some of the best ideas are the ones that come up after we’ve exhausted all our options. In fact, we’ll often walk away from a long brainstorming session and come back the next day to rest our minds, digest some of the ideas, and come back with a clear head.

Albert Einstein said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting the same results.” Doing the same old brainstorming may yield an amazing idea once in a while, but more often than not, it’s just going to produce mediocre results for your client. However, when you spice up your routine and push past the obvious, you just might blow them away.

1. Focus on what’s in it for the reader.

As James wrote about in Brand Metaphors 101, people are motivated by three higher needs: affiliation, aspiration, and identity. Anyone who has had training in sales or writing knows the #1 question a reader or customer is asking themselves is, “What’s in it for me?” People crave for us to solve a problem they have or give them a reason why they should listen to us. Give them that reason upfront to draw them in and leave them on the edge of their seat.

2. Be specific.

What’s the key point of your content? That’s what the headline or title should reflect. According to Ogilvy, 80% of people only read headlines and skip the rest. If that’s the case, it makes sense to be as specific as possible so readers can quickly identify what the content is about and decide whether or not it’s applicable to them.

3. Balance personality and relevance.

Many writers fall into two traps: being too straightforward or too catchy. When you’re too straightforward, it can come across as boring and may not grab the reader’s attention. When you get too creative, you can lose the main point of your content and lose your reader altogether. Instead, try to balance the two by giving the headline enough personality to entice the reader, while still explaining what the article is about. See BNET for more examples on how to be creative and explanatory.

4. Stay true to your voice.

Your headlines and titles should always align with your brand’s voice or personality. If you work for a large company that is very professional and formal, it probably wouldn’t make sense to say, “Check out our new site, dudes!” On the other hand, if your company’s voice is quirky and casual, it would sound bizarre to say, “Learn how to involve your key stakeholders in developing your strategic vision.” Identify what your company’s verbal style is, and stick to it.

5. Talk about benefits, not features.

Along the same lines, people respond a lot more positively to benefits than to features. No one cares that the iPod has 160GB of storage (although that is pretty impressive). They care that they can listen to 40,000 songs in a row and never have to delete one again. That’s powerful! When you rely on features, you’re not speaking your customers’ language, and they move on. Features can be duplicated. Your unique benefits and solutions can’t.

6. Stay away from cliches.

Please spare us the pain of another variation of “Lions and tigers and bears – oh my!” in your headline. These kinds of cliches are hard to get away from. They’re easy to remember, you think they make you sound creative, and they’re often the first thing you think of. And that’s why they shouldn’t be used. If cliches were effective, everyone could be a writer. Push past it, and come up with a new way to describe your topic. Your readers will be pleasantly surprised and more likely to read what you have to say.

7. Breathe new life into tired words.

Words like “great,” “helpful,” “awesome,” and “interesting” are ok, but they don’t impress anyone. Give your headline or title some extra oomph by going through each word (aside from prepositions) and brainstorming more vivid or engaging ways to say the same thing. The thesaurus can be your best friend!

8. Consider SEO, but don’t force it.

There’s an ongoing debate in the marketing industry about writing for search engine optimization vs. writing for humans. Forty is a proponent of writing with SEO in mind, while focusing first and foremost on what makes sense to a person. Keywords are important for search engines, but if your headline is confusing or robotic, it’s not going to draw someone in to read your content anyway. When you speak the language of your audience, you’ll naturally get more relevant search traffic. Include a keyword or phrase in your headline if it makes sense, but be sure you’re writing for humans, not robots.

9. Use an active voice.

Using a passive voice can be awkward, vague, or unnecessarily wordy. Tighten your writing, and cut to the chase by using an active voice. Also, eliminate any extraneous words to make the title more succinct.

10. Build an attention-grabbing arsenal.

All readers want to be entertained, to reaffirm their beliefs, to know how they can help, to be confronted, or to be enlightened. They’re drawn in when they think something is meaningful and fascinating. There are lots of headline and title formulas that have been proven to work (how to’s, lists, intriguing questions, etc.). Building up your own toolbox of content and headline prompts may help when you’ve hit writers block. Think about using metaphors (“Social Media Turns Tie Games into Brand Wins” by Jay Baer) or comparing your topic to things people are already familiar with (“10 Things Lady Gaga Can Teach Marketers About Building Community” by Fast Company). Check out our blog on writing prompts for more ideas.

For more help on improving your writing, check out Copyblogger, Copyediting Blog, Daily Writing Tips, and Grammar Girl, or keep your eyes peeled on our blog for more handy tips in the future.

Long ago, businesses were completely based on serving people. They knew their customers by name. They related to them and made decisions based on what would make their customers happy. They put their life’s work into producing a fan-freaking-tastic product or service for their customer because they really cared about them. They understood that without their support, they had no hope for survival.

Then the Industrial Revolution came along. Machines took the place of people, and these new methods of mass production enabled companies to produce products faster and cheaper. Americans bought into the new and exciting array of goods available to them. As business boomed, companies slowly became more and more driven by profits, rather than by the customers who supported them.

Over the past couple decades, we’ve realized it’s no fun to only be a number on a company’s account list. So, we’ve once again become drawn to businesses that create a memorable experience for us by making us feel like we matter to them. We’re right back to “new” business that actually cares about people.

Goodness knows I’m as proud as anyone of our American heritage filled with innovation and ingenuity—including that of the Industrial Revolution—but I’m glad to see things have come full circle and businesses are once again adopting a people-first approach. If you ask me, that’s the way it should always be.

Branding and marketing isn’t about fluff, or trickery, or opinions, or manipulation, or creativity, or preferences, or fanciness. It’s not a layer of prettiness added at the last minute. It’s not about pushing messages down people’s throats. It’s not about buzzwords, or trends, or social media.

It’s about old fashioned human psychology. It’s about shaping the way people respond to a situation. It’s about making things happen.

The Friend-or-Foe response

One of the most ancient functions of the human brain is simply to separate things that are good (food, family, warmth, etc.) from things that are bad (poison, enemies, predators, etc.).

You use this part of your brain thousands of times every day, maybe thousands of times every hour. It happens in an instant, based on subtle clues your brain has picked up from the surrounding environment. It’s so fundamental that you probably don’t even notice it.

• You approach someone on the sidewalk. He’s wearing old, dirty clothes. He hasn’t shaved in a week. He’s limping strangely. He looks up at you and narrows his eyes. Friend or foe?
• Your grandmother opens the front door of a house you’ve visited since you were a baby, and her eyes light up. Her eyes widen. She opens her arms to hug you. You smell peach cobbler from the kitchen. Friend or foe?
• You receive an email from your boyfriend with the subject line “We need to talk.” Friend or foe?
• Your law firm is interviewing for a much-needed administrative assistant position. The candidate is late for the interview, and comes into the office wearing flip-flops and shorts. His resume is missing a page. Friend or foe?
• You hear screeching breaks and someone yelling. Friend or foe?
• You’re worried about your wife being mad about you rushing out the door this morning, but her voice is upbeat when she calls you in the afternoon to see what you want for dinner. Friend or foe?

The Friend-or-Foe response is one of the most basic mental transactions that’s hard-wired into our brain. There’s no way around it.

Every time a potential customer visits your website, takes your business card, clicks your Google ad, picks up a phone call from your sales rep, or walks into your office, they’re brain is doing the same thing. They’re trying to figure out, in an instant, whether you’re a friend who can help them accomplish their goals, or a foe trying to get their money and run.

It doesn’t matter what the principals think

The principals always think their company is the Friend. They think it’s completely obvious to anyone. Obviously better customer service. Obviously better quality product. Obviously more trustworthy staff.

But here’s the deep, dark secret that most companies’ principals never totally understand: it’s not obvious to the customers. The customers are still trying to figure it out based on the few pieces of information they have. All they see is your clunky website, your cheap logo, your inconsistent marketing materials, your sales guy that won’t go away, or the dead plant in the corner of your office.

By the time you start your pitch, their Friend-or-Foe response has already kicked in, and you’re probably fighting against it before you ever open your mouth. Sometimes you’ll overcome it with a convincing presentation, but many times you’ll just lose that potential customer, and be left to wonder why they didn’t understand how great your offerings are.

You need consistency, character, and reassurance

To clarify, I’m not suggesting the goal is simply to be more “friendly,” although that can help. Having an honest, authentic, “human” brand can go a long way toward helping potential customers feel comfortable with you. It’s also not as simple as “don’t look evil.” (Most companies already try to avoid looking evil.)

It’s really about presenting your company in a way that is thoroughly reassuring to your potential customers, and that presents a rich and consistent experience that helps them understand (at a deep psychological level) that you’re unique among your competitors, and that your company is the obvious best choice.

Right now, you’re probably stuck in limbo between Friend and Foe with regard to how your company represents itself. The experience is a bit haphazard and tossed-together. It doesn’t have a deep sense of focus and purpose and character. It’s filler. It’s nice. It’s just alright.

This means your customers have to really dig in and figure out whether they can trust you or not, and many of them won’t put forth the effort.

Most companies are really bad at the Friend-or-Foe response

With regard to crafting their customers’ Friend-or-Foe responses, companies fall into three categories:

• Companies that are bad at it, and go out of business.
• Companies that are bad at it, but see some success anyway. (This is probably you.)
• Companies that are good at it, and are wildly successful.

Generally speaking, if you can craft the customer’s experience in a way that thoroughly reassures them that you’re a friend who’s going to help them accomplish their goals, then your company’s going to make good money.

Most companies fall into the middle category. They have a janky website, inconsistent sales materials, and lots of “random acts of marketing,” but they’re seeing enough success year after year to keep going. They might even be growing, in an awkward and inefficient way. (See my article on What it takes to be a high-growth company for some insights into painful growth.)

Often, these companies are brute-forcing it by pounding gobs of money into advertising, and then trying to making something in the margins. In the worst cases, they feel like they’re actually doing great at marketing, because there’s lots of activity, lots of money changing hands, etc. They don’t realize how many potential customers they are failing to engage with, simply because they never hear from those that got away. This “success fallacy” is a common misperception that’s hard to clear up.

Your company probably doesn’t do this well, and it’s time to fix it

Because most companies are bad at crafting marketing experiences that successfully pass the Friend-or-Foe test, there’s a good chance your company is one of them. (This is true even if you’re making money and growing, since it’s possible to grow through brute force and throwing money at the problem, even if your marketing is actually performing less efficiently than it should be.)

To fix it, you have to get outside the mindset of a company principal. You have to look at the situation with genuine objectivity. All your faithful customers will pat you on the back and tell you everything’s great, but how often do you hear from the hundreds or thousands (or tens of thousands) of potential customers you lost because they just weren’t feeling it? What was it about your brand experience that left them cold?

You also have to overcome your crippling fear of change. If you’re already making money, you’re probably afraid to change anything. This unfortunate reflex is the reason many businesses continue to crawl instead of walking (or running).

Your business wants to move faster than you’re allowing it move. You probably do have a great business, but you’re probably not expressing that to customers in their own language, and in the subconscious ways they’d find most reassuring.

It’s time to step out of the way, and see what your business can really become when its full character and potential is unleashed in a refreshing, powerful, and evocative way that makes people want to embrace your company instead of skeptically evaluating it. Then you can pound money into advertising, and watch your bottom line explode.

At Forty, we have to combat our personal biases every day, and we encourage our clients to do the same. The goal of design and marketing is to inspire action from your target audience. It’s not about our personal opinions, preferences, or trends; it’s about what will make things happen. That’s why we discuss decision modes with our clients on every project. It’s crucial to understand who your customers are, what they’re looking for, and how they make decisions. Although many business owners are similar to their target audience, it’s important to have an open mind to realize that everyone is not like you.

If we’re working with you and we keep asking, “What do you think would resonate with your customers?” it’s not because we’re writing off your opinions. It’s because we want to make sure the choices we make are justified and appropriate for the audience. A good business or creative mind can explain the reasoning behind their choices beyond just, “It’s pretty.” or “I like it.” Without justification, it’s hard to know whether our decisions come from habit, fear, opinion, or random whimsies.

When you put yourself in your customers’ shoes and think outside your bubble, you’ll be able to see your company from a new perspective, develop more engaging and effective marketing, and successfully connect with your tribe.

“Hold your breath…Make a wish” Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory came about by bewildering circumstances. In 1970, film director Mel Stuart’s daughter, Madeline, had just finished reading a new book. She proposed he make a movie around the sweet, visionary world of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by author Roald Dahl.

After reading the story and sharing it with his production partners, Stuart approached the Quaker Oats company with the idea of creating a movie for promoting their soon-to-be-released candy bar. Quaker loved the idea and immediately recognized the potential of creating not only buzz, but also a lasting brand for the new chocolate treat.

“Count to three” Even for a small production shop, the $3 million dollar budget for the movie was a low number to work with. They counted every nickel and stretched every dime. Corners were cut, and desperate measures were taken to frugally manage everything, from on-the-fly script writing to production and casting hurdles. Luckily for Stuart, he had amazing talent and a committed team willing to work together.

Everyone who became involved with the story was immediately dedicated to the film’s vision (not just for love of creative work, but also for their belief in the power of the story – the truth that children want and need to know their limits). And of course, it was every child’s most secret desire come true – a land of candy and the opportunity to explore.

“Pure imagination” Having the foresight to take a commoditized product and create a brand around it with a movie was pure genius. Making a movie isn’t like making a 30-second commercial. A movie might last forever, and this was exactly Quaker’s hope. Sadly, in a strange turn of events, problems with the candy bar’s formula caused the chocolate to melt on the grocery store shelves, and the candy was recalled.

With no product on the shelves and the movie newly released, it was actually the movie that grew famous, while the candy bar faded away. (Bonus lesson: The importance of quality control can’t be underestimated!) Had the candy survived, who knows what the scale of their business would be today. The Wonka brand has resurfaced in recent years, largely the result of trading on the movie’s fame.

“Want to change the world?” So, how important is it to create something more than just the shelf product? I think you can find the answer each time you see the movie pop up while flipping channels and stop to catch a few minutes of this favorite childhood flick (or maybe you end up watching the whole thing!).

The moral of the story: If you want something to last, you need to commit to making it happen. You need to invest talent, take risks, and work tirelessly like Oompa-Loopmas.

Image used from Flickr by Marcus Quigmire http://www.flickr.com/people/marcusq/

We’ve compiled and analyzed this data, comparing it against general business data provided by the U.S. Census Bureau, to uncover some clues about what makes the Inc. 5000 companies different from the more average businesses out there.

(We grouped the data into ranges based on annual revenue to ensure similar companies were being compared. We’ve also limited our discussion here to companies with revenue less than $100 million since there wasn’t enough data on $100 million+ companies to make effective comparisons.)

The results were surprising and may challenge some preconceived notions about high-growth companies. It’s easy to assume that rapid business growth is universally a good thing, but this data shows that rapid growth definitely comes with compromises.

Average employee counts

The first set of data we analyzed was the average number of employees per company. Here’s what we found:

As you can see, there’s a pretty consistent trend that Inc. 5000 companies have significantly more employees than general businesses in their same revenue group. On average, Inc. 5000 companies employ 53% more employees than normal companies generating the same annual revenue.

Revenue per capita

You can look at this data another way, in terms of how much revenue is generated per employee.

On average, an Inc. 5000 company generates 31% less revenue per employee than normal companies do. That may be a surprise to those who associate “high growth” with “high profits.”

Impact on salaries

While the averages vary by industry, it’s normal for overall payroll budget to be calculated as a percentage of annual revenue. Some industries average as high as 50% of revenue going toward payroll, while others can be as low as 20%.

With the Inc. 5000 trend toward having 50% more employees to generate the same amount of revenue, you can imagine the impact this must have on salaries.

For example, let’s say you’re in a $10 million/year company in an industry that traditionally puts 30% of annual revenue toward payroll. At a normal company, your average share of payroll might be $43,000, while at an Inc. 5000 company, that might look more like $29,000.

It could be that these companies are paying competitive salaries by taking that money from somewhere else. Either way, they have a lot of mouths to feed, so there’s less pie to go around.

What does it all mean?

First, the obligatory disclaimer: this data comes from different sources with different approaches and restrictions, so while it’s possible to extract useful insights from the averages, you should keep in mind we’re comparing two sets of data with different imperfections, and these conclusions are generally speculative.

It’s easy to feel like “high-growth” companies equate to massive success, high margins, everyone making money, etc., but the reality of the Inc. 5000 data (when compared to census data on general businesses in the same revenue range) seems to paint a different picture.

It would appear these companies are growing faster than normal partially by hiring at an accelerated pace. Even if this leads to actually running less efficiently (in terms of revenue per capita) than normal companies, they’re apparently overcoming that barrier by adding people so fast that their overall revenue keeps growing.

While this growth increases the bottom line, there are risks and compromises that come with it. Lower efficiency means everyone’s getting paid less than they would at a high-efficiency company, and the overall profit margins are probably lower too.

Knowing this, it’s important for company principals to sit down and really figure out what they want to accomplish from a business perspective. For some, that bottom-line growth may be exactly what they’re looking for (“blow it up and cash out”). Others may benefit more from a slower, long-term approach that increases their overall efficiency (in terms of revenue per capita) and reduces the risk of their company growing out of control and losing its way.

However you decide to run your company, make sure you’re actually pursuing defined strategic goals and not just pursuing “growth for growth’s sake.” Rapid business growth can introduce some significant risks and actually reduce profit, so it’s important to take that into account when planning your company’s future.

This rapid growth approach can also directly affect your marketing efforts (which can help secure the future of your company). It’s tempting to pull back on long-term marketing efforts in favor of feeding immediate growth, but just remember that the high-adrenaline momentum is never stable, and you’ll need a solid foundation in place for when things start to shift (which is probably happening right now).

As I watched more and more of this mindless mush, I started to realize just how cheesy and stereotypical they are. But they work. Companies wouldn’t keep making them if they didn’t—just look at how home shopping has skyrocketed QVC into a multibillion-dollar business. In an age of hot trends and shot-gun marketing tactics, there are a few things we can learn about advertising from this old-school practice:

1. Figure out why you’re the best, and say it.

One of the keys to building a successful business is knowing the one point (at least) that makes you different and better than your competitors. Get away from the defaults, and look for the qualities where you can say you’re “the best” or “the only one.” It should be something that’s ownable, believable, and important to your customers. Then, don’t be afraid to shout it out from the rooftops.

Infomercial example: “Snuggie is the only blanket with sleeves!” – Snuggie

2. Back up your claims with testimonials, facts, and figures.

You can tout your benefits until the cows come home, but firsthand reviews and supporting proof goes a long way. People love sharing their opinions, and potential buyers find reassurance in hearing positive feedback from others like them. Facts and figures also help support your claims and prove the effectiveness of your product or service.

Infomercial example: “I lost 50 pounds, and I feel beautiful!” – Xenadrin

3. Talk about solutions and benefits, not features.

No one cares that your frying pan has super duper heating technology or that your consulting agency has 106 combined years of experience. Your customers want to know how you’re going to help solve their problems. When you rely on features, you’re not speaking your customers’ language, and they move on. Features can be duplicated. Your unique benefits and solutions can’t.

Infomercial example: “Feed your hungry family in under three minutes.” – Ron Popeil Pasta Maker

4. Add value by showing multiple uses.

The only thing better than having a really useful product or service is having one that’s useful in *lots* of ways. Your company probably promotes the traditional benefits that most customers can see at face value, but you can add even more value by showing them the additional creative ways they’ll benefit from working with you.

Infomercial example: “Style Snaps aren’t just for hems. Tame unruly lapels, belts, and pockets without a stitch!” – Style Snaps

5. Don’t just say it. Show it!

Infomercials are great at showing all the ways a product works. Describing what your product or service does is always helpful, but people are visual. We love examples and seeing things in action. Say why your company is awesome, and then show why it’s awesome. Bonus points for comparing how you’re better than competitors (in a respectful way, of course)!

Infomercial example: Showing two vacuums pick up dirt side by side, like Oreck Vacuums.

6. Tell stories.

Storytelling is more engaging than selling, and it helps people remember you. People want to feel like they’re having a conversation with a friend, not defending themselves against a pushy sales pitch. Talk to some of your real customers, and find out exactly how your business helped them. Then, tap into your potential buyers’ emotions by telling the story and showing how they could benefit too.

Infomercial example: “When I first started P90X, I was 374 pounds…A close friend confronted me and asked me if I was afraid another man would have to raise my kids…To date, I’ve lost 180 pounds with P90X. Now that I’ve lost all this weight, I can’t sit still!” – P90X

7. Use memorable phrases and taglines.

Sum up your brand experience in a short, clever phrase or tagline. This will provide something for people to latch on to and help them remember you.

Infomercial example: “Set it, and forget it!” – Ronco Rotisserie

8. Use scarcity or promotions to get people in the door.

As humans, we suffer from loss aversion, which means we’re much more sensitive to losses than to gains. Part of the reason infomercials are so successful is they use emotional hot buttons, like scarcity and hard-to-resist deals. They create a subconscious drive to take action immediately, even if you wouldn’t necessarily want the product under normal circumstances. Don’t lie to your customers or make deceiving offers, but rather, offer them a small incentive for taking the leap and trying out your company.

Infomercial example: “Call in the next 20 minutes, and get six pounds of Oxyclean!” – Oxyclean

9. Offer guarantees and assurances.

People love feeling confident and reassured. Guarantees can be a powerful way to prove your confidence in your business and convince them to act. Hearing phrases like, “Guaranteed or your money back” and “If you’re not fully satisfied, we want to hear about it” reduces the risk for your customers and makes them feel more comfortable trusting you. Just make sure you can deliver on your promises!

Informercial example: “LockFresh comes with a 30-day money back guarantee!” – LockFresh

10. Give your customers quick buy options.

All of your customers have different decision modes. Some make decisions quickly, while others need time to scour through the details and ruminate before making choices. For those competitive and spontaneous decision styles, give them obvious calls to action and easy ways to take the next step.

Infomercial example: “Order now at 1-800-780-6744!” – Tony Little’s Gazelle Trainer

Although infomercials are primarily used for B2C products, the same principles can be applied successfully to most services and B2B companies. There are definitely downfalls to infomercials, but if you look past the host’s forced smile, the fake audience, and totally random products (Hair in a Can, anyone?), you just may find some helpful tips that could transform your business.

Learn more helpful marketing tips with our 40 Creative Marketing Ideas workbook, or get in touch with us today.

When you take the time to talk about others, people tend to perceive you as more genuine in your claims (and less sales oriented), which can only be a good thing.

So the next time you come into contact with an amazing company, or had a great customer service experience, let everyone know!

Once you’ve done that, be sure to read through some of our other marketing ideas.

We took turns creating this tale of the Sky Admiral Aloeicious, his wife Reginia, and his trusty steed Areion — one line at a time. It’s a quest of truly epic proportions. Or at the very least, way more entertaining than what you’re used to.

Download: Forty Ipsum

They can be present at any public event, or maybe even make an appearance around the office to boost morale every so often. Just be sure to document each of his or her appearances so those external to your organization can catch a glimpse as well.

There’s a reason that sports teams make use of these cheery little characters — people like them!

And if a mascot won’t work for you, we have plenty of other marketing ideas for you to try.

Most senior care companies are generally sterile or cheesy, with lots of medical terms and posed stock photography of Grandma and Grandpa. AlwaysOn understands seniors and their loved ones aren’t looking for sterile or cheesy; they’re looking for a reliable, trustworthy, and empathetic partner, who can relieve their stress, provide high-quality care, and understand the emotional situation they’re going through.

We started by working with the staff at AlwaysOn to get to the root of what makes them different from their peers. Then, we did audience research and developed a brand metaphor to inspire our branding work and their customer experience. After some extensive brainstorming, we determined the metaphor for AlwaysOn is a modern-day version of The Andy Griffith Show. The show embodies the old-fashioned values of the 1960’s and conjures up a similar experience to AlwaysOn. It reflects a simpler time, when people were trustworthy, warm, and knew everyone in their community. We put a modern twist on this concept since AlwaysOn is professional, sharp, and has higher standards of quality than those of the 1960s.

This research and brainstorming culminated in a verbal and visual identity that will help communicate their message and create an engaging experience for their customers.

After refreshing the brand, we began designing a new website to reflect the new look. The previous website showcased the services AlwaysOn offers, but it was lacking personality and didn’t fully convey why AlwaysOn is unique. The new site’s design and message reflect a mix of old-fashioned charm and modern professionalism.

Old website

New website

We’re also helping AlwaysOn integrate the new look into their business materials – including folders, business cards, brochures, and more – to make sure the customer experience is consistent.

With a warm, thoughtful brand and new website in place, AlwaysOn is ready to effectively communicate what makes them special, drive additional business, and most importantly, help keep people comfortable and happy in their homes.

I’d like to propose that rule #1.1 is to be smart with website banner ads. Or, more to the point, avoid drop down banner ads.

This type of banner ad starts out as a thin strip and then expands vertically when the page loads, pushing the page content down. After about 10-15 seconds, the ad retracts, moving the page content back up to its original position. A person attempting to read the page content is forced to deal with the disruption of the content shifting around (or to close up the ad to its original size).

Closed banner ad

Expanded banner ad. Check out how far the content moves!

It’s a pretty major disruption, and it doesn’t build goodwill on the part of customers (toward the website or the advertiser). Plus, enraging visitors doesn’t seem like the best way to go when your goal is for them to buy your product or service.

Here are some effective things to keep in mind for your advertising strategy:

• Context matters. Customers are more likely to listen to you when your ad supports their goals, rather than combats them. This is why Google has found great success serving relevant ads with search results.
• Stick around. If you want to take advantage of new technology, try retargeting to get your ads in front of customers more often. Repetition builds awareness, making it more likely your customers will remember you when they need your product or service.
• Remember the humans. Using newfangled advertising methods may temporarily draw eyeballs, but people don’t want to have to step around your ad to complete their task. Finding a way to flow with them and support their efforts makes you seem like a genius in their eyes.

What do you think of drop down banner ads — pure brilliance or painful blunder?

I’ve recently become a Dave Ramsey listener and reader, and I’ve felt an overwhelming sense of tribe pulling me into the brand like a tractor beam (nerd alert). As a marketer, I suspected that the Dave Ramsey team was using the elements of tribal branding and marketing to lure me into becoming an active member of their movement. I just sold my car to get out of debt, so they must be doing something right.

Let’s see if we can identify the tribal elements within the Dave Ramsey brand:

Creed
“Debt is dumb, cash is king, and the paid-off home mortgage has taken the place of the BMW as the new status symbol of choice.”
This is a clever opening tagline that Dave uses at the top of every show. It’s memorable and summarizes the tribal creed quite nicely.

“Live like no one else so later you can live like no one else.”
This idea of being the oddball with your money comes up a lot throughout this tribe. This tribe values a lifestyle of sacrifice over comfort in the short-term because it believes it is worth it in the long run.

Values
Financial Independence
Giving
Self-sacrifice
Relationships
Hope in God

Commandments
The Seven Baby Steps
These commandments are discussed so often that it’s hard to forget any! A simple way to relate to others in the tribe is to ask them what step they are on.

Vision
The Great Recovery: A new American economy fueled by wealth, not debt.
This is the inspiring, overarching vision that the tribe is working hard to achieve, complete with its own microsite.

Demons
Debt
Big banks
Scam artists
The idea that the government can fix the economy

People
Dave Ramsey
In this tribe, Dave Ramsey himself is the leader. The tribe is currently working to build up other speakers and authors, but this may be a potential threat since so much of tribal brand equity is rolled into one man.

ELPs (Endorsed Local Providers)
ELPs are the local financial service professionals that have been “ordained” to carry out the tribe’s mission on a practical level. They are screened and must meet tribal criteria in order to reach this level of authority within the brand.

Financial Peace University leaders
The tribe’s doctrine, practices, and commandments (The Baby Steps) are taught by local teachers at Financial Peace University.

Animals
Gazelle
The gazelle can escape its predators by running away with extreme intensity and focus. This is a metaphor used in the tribe for getting out of debt that raises the stakes. The Gazelle metaphor effectively communicates to the tribe that this is a matter of life and death.

Words and Phrases
Debt free
“Better than I deserve”
Act your wage
Gazelle-intense
Stupid tax

Places
Financial Peace Plaza (Nashville, TN)
Members of the Dave Ramsey tribe converge upon Nashville to do their debt-free scream. Families will literally drive thousands of miles across the country just to scream that they are out of debt from the lobby of “Financial Peace Plaza”.

Sounds
“We’re deeeeebt freeeeee!!!” (The Debt Free Scream)
This has become a very powerful tribal mantra. Several years ago, a caller to the radio show got a little excited and started shouting “I’m debt free.” This is a perfect example of an iconic tribal sound. It developed organically within the tribe and has naturally become an initiation symbol for new members in the tribe.

Blake’s Bumps
The music played before and after commercial breaks during the radio show are a part of the tribe, and even this part has its own following on twitter (@blakesbumps)

Just as I suspected, the Dave Ramsey brand has a TON of tribal elements that seem to be working very well. What brands do you think are doing a good job of building a dynamic tribe?

 *photo credit - Stig Nygaard

A great brand is built and expressed through every single detail of a business. A logo is simply one of those ways. Your logo is only one small brick in the whole architecture of your brand warehouse. It shouldn’t be burdened with the job of summarizing your entire organization; it simply needs to set the right tone for your brand.

Instead of putting all your eggs in the logo basket, focus on the entire brand experience. The way your client feels after an interaction with you—any kind of interaction with you—is the true definition of your brand. A logo is an important, consistent part of it, but you shouldn’t neglect other areas of your brand strategy in favor of searching out the holy logo grail. Brand experience outweighs a logo any day.

Your logo simply needs to feel like the rest of your brand interactions. A little ambiguity is ok. That curiosity encourages more interaction with your company. If you focus on the health of the entire brand instead of just on the logo, you’ll be much more likely to attract loyal and fully engaged customers, who are excited to be part of your tribe.

Meanwhile, their SEO juice is leaking all over the floor. Their rankings are going to suffer, and they don’t even know it yet. Amazingly, even the web developers themselves often don’t know how or why this happens, or what to do to prevent it. (This is why it pays to hire experts.)

Keeping your SEO juice is actually pretty simple, and I’m going to show you how to do it.

Google (and other search engines) associate ranking value with specific URLs. On your original site from the late 90s, you might have used this URL for your “About MegaCorp” page:

http://megacorp.com/aboutus.html

When you redesigned back in 2007, the web developer changed it to this:

http://megacorp.com/pages/about.php

And with your recent redesign, it became this:

http://megacorp.com/about

From Google’s perspective, those are three different pages. Instead of giving you credit for having had the page since the 90s, and counting all the links your About MegaCorp page has acquired over the years, it’s seeing the most recent page as brand new, disconnected from everything else, with no external inbound links. It’s a newborn baby page, and Google’s ranking formulas will assign it a relatively low value as a result.

And what happens to all the SEO juice Google assigned to the previous versions of the page? When it checks those pages again and just gets a “404 Page Not Found” error, it assumes they’re dead, and the value disappears.

This can be devastating for businesses that depend on their search rankings. When you consider that this his happening across dozens / hundreds / thousands of pages across your site whenever the site structure changes, you can start to see how important this often-ignored issue really is.

Use “301 Redirects” to preserve your precious SEO juice

You’re might be familiar with some of the 3-digit codes web servers use to respond to requested URLs: 200 (OK), 404 (page not found), 401 (unauthorized), 403 (forbidden), 503 (service unavailable), etc.

One of those codes is 301 (move permanently). It tells the requesting software, usually a web browser or search engine spider, that the content from one URL has moved to another URL.

When Google sees a 301, it basically takes the SEO juice it had assigned to the first one, and moves it over to the second one. Beautiful!

It also has the additional benefit of preventing people from getting on “Page not Found” errors when the follow old links to pages on your site. They’re gracefully and automatically redirected to the appropriate new page on the site.

How exactly you implement the 301 redirects may vary somewhat depending on your exact situation. It’s usually a good idea to have it handled by someone who’s done it before, since it can get pretty technical, and errors are sometimes subtle and difficult to track down.

In it’s simplest form, though, it might look something like this (added to a file called .htaccess located on the web server):

Redirect 301 /aboutus.html http://megacorp.com/about Redirect 301 /pages/about.php http://megacorp.com/about

We’re currently on the 13th version of our website, and we’ve set up these 301 redirects every time. Unfortunately, that means our .htaccess file has hundreds of lines, but it also means that our site has a stronger SEO presence than most of our peer agencies.

So don’t let your SEO juice leak all over the floor when you change your website. Set up 301 redirects so Google knows what’s up, and so your audience never has to deal with “Page not Found” errors. Over the years, you’ll find the value of this practice accumulates, giving your site significantly better rankings than you’d otherwise have.

When we brainstorm as a team, we use the game Name 10 Things to gather ideas that are all green-hat (anything goes, all are plausible, no veto-ing allowed yet, etc.). How do you play, you ask? It’s so easy! Each person takes a turn quickly and without hesitation, naming 10 things about any given topic, and anything goes (even duplicate answers). Here’s my quick Name 10 Things that I will play right now with myself:

“Katie, name 10 things you love about ice cream!”

1. it’s cold
2. it’s fruity
3. it’s icy
4. it’s got chocolate
5. it satisfies my sweet craving
6. it’s Blue Bell
7. it’s perfect in the summertime
8. it gets yummy when its melty
9. it’s fruity
10. it’s available year round!

As our improv-expert David loves to remind us, a game like Name 10 Things is helpful because its fast and it pushes you to come up with 10 ideas that are all totally acceptable. At least at first. (Remember, it’s a brainstorm, many ideas will later get rejected.)

Why ten things?

Why not! Ten is a nice, soft, round number, and not too overwhelming for a brainstorm. Many times, the brain gets stumped with the challenge of coming up with a board full of answers. Ten things is easy, because it’s a short list. So, when you’re stumped with only 7 ideas, don’t quit, the end is in sight.

When you play, the first couple of answers you name are probably obvious. And when you’ve got to think fast it forces some creativity. Your answers may get weird a few answers later, but then your mind comes back around to some deeper, more meaningful ideas towards the end of your neat, short 10 items list And this works in so many ways! We use this method via email thread, standing in a circle as a team (which is fun, because your team counts down right after each of your answers), or in a small group with a whiteboard.

Try this brainstorming method the next time you need a list and feel overwhelmed. And invite others to play, too!

Projects range across the board, from those with robust scopes and long timelines to those that are flexible and constructed iteratively. Some people work better under pressure, but often people don’t realize rushing the creative process (or any process, really) will rarely help achieve the goal without consequences. You may meet your deadline, but something has been compromised, whether it’s the quality, cost, due diligence, or even your sanity.

Think about an architect or a builder. Lots of times they feel rushed to finish the blueprints or complete construction to meet a grand opening or hard deadline. They may be able to speed up the process, but do you really want them to? Do you want to risk the building’s safety or quality just to shave a few days off the timeline? My guess is the answer would be, “no.” (If yours was “yes,” consider the Lotus Riverside apartment collapse in Shanghai, the Hyatt Regency walkway failure, or the Leaning Tower of Pisa.)

We’re not in the building business (although there are lots of parallels), but we’ve found similar results. The project triangle shows three project attributes – fast, good, and cheap. But you can only choose two. This is equally true when it comes to the type of work we do at Forty: we can work within your timeline, scope, or budget, but you have to prioritize two attributes.

Our team can work with short turnaround times, but we’ve noticed several compromises:

• It requires more coordination since there are lots of moving pieces that must align in a short period of time.
• We often have to make assumptions, proceed without full approval, or forego looking at the big picture to meet the deadline.
• We don’t have time to collaborate with each other or the client, so we don’t get to fully develop our ideas.
• There’s usually lots of disruptive back and forth communication between us and the client, several revisions (which may take just as much time as doing it the first time), and, in the end, more money spent than expected.

Emergencies come up. Like any consultant or creative partner, we understand this and can complete high-quality work quickly. However, it’s in the best interest of all people involved to set realistic expectations, plan ahead, and take these “emergencies” in stride. After all, we want to build you the Eiffel Tower, not one of those disasters above.

How do you handle short deadlines? Have you found ways to achieve the ultimate trinity of budget, timeline, and scope?

Post-it notes are addicting. They’re fun and childlike, and it’s because they’re a little game. You write your note, and then you get to peel off each little square of paper. Not only that, but they STICK to something. What’s not to love? Kids love Post-it Notes, so do adults!

Post-it Notes have shaped the way we communicate. Think about their small size. You’ve got a limited little space to communicate a thought, note, idea, or memo. Are they the precursors to Twitter’s 140 character limit, perhaps?

If you need to create a fast and agile to-do list, these little canary-yellow flags might be your best choice. Each Post-it Note is a task, and when all the tasks are lined up neatly on the wall, it’s easy to see how much work you’ve got in front of you. When you’re done, throw it out. Need to move it to tomorrow? MOVE it to tomorrow! You’ll be amazed at how much fun it is to get stuff done.

BRAND PURPOSE

Research cited in Built to Last (by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras) indicates that purpose-driven companies can outperform the general market by a 15 to 1 ratio.

That’s a lot.

There’s a reason your company was founded. There’s a reason why you’re in the industry you’re in. There’s a reason why you’re not working for someone else. You need to dig deep, and find out what those reasons really are.

And you can safely skip all the corporate mumbo-jumbo that may be coming to mind on your first attempt. Your purpose isn’t “providing customer satisfaction” or “increasing shareholder value” or anything along those lines. It’s just not. Those are things you feel like you have to say because of pressure from other people, but they’re not the real reason.

And the desire to make money alone isn’t enough to build a brand purpose either. As Peter Drucker once put it, “Profit isn’t the purpose of a business, but rather a test of its validity.”

So dig in, and get honest with yourself. Why are you really in this business? Why does this matter to you? Why should anyone actually care?

Once you know that, you’ve got the kernel of a real brand. And if you don’t have a good answer…well, just remember that those who do have an answer may be outperforming your company 15 to 1.

BRAND VALUES

Once you know your purpose, the next step is to identify the 3-5 brand values that will guide your company from the inside, and (through the clarity this internal alignment will bring) help people on the outside understand what you’re all about.

Your value keywords will typically be abstract nouns, like “authenticity” or “simplicity” or “self-sufficiency.”

Some quick guidelines for identifying your values:

• Skip the defaults.
• Focus. You can’t have 6 or 8 or 12 values. Keep it to five or less. Even five may be too many. (Any more, and you can’t remember them well enough to live by them.)
• Ignore what people want to hear. This is for you. This has to be real. You can’t fake your values.
• It may help to contrast them with your “unvalues,” the ideas you’re actually trying to get away from.
• You may also want to extend your brand values into a “brand manifesto,” which includes specific statements of belief derived from the values.

Once you’ve identified your values, you should be able to measure absolutely everything your company does against those values. If something is contrary to those values, or compromises them in some way, get rid of it. Your values are your guides. Trust that they know the way better than you do, and rigorously align your company behind them.

BRAND STYLE

With your values established, you can now begin identifying the observable characteristics of your brand through style keywords.

Brand style keywords are typically adjectives that describe your brand’s personality and character as it would be observed by others. As with brand values, you’ll want to keep your brand style to about 3-5 keywords. Fewer will result in a shallow brand, and more will result in an unfocused brand.

If you’ve ever played the game Apples to Apples, you may recall that it has a big deck of adjectives. We sometimes use this deck with our clients to help identify the keywords that best reflect their brand style. It’s worth giving it a shot if you’re not coming up with great ideas off the top of your head.

As with the brand values, you’ll want to be careful to avoid the “defaults,” the obvious answers everyone wants to put. Remember that you’re trying to figure out what makes your brand really unique, so try to find the keywords that really set you apart.

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

With your purpose, values, and style established as an interconnected unit, you’ve got the foundation of your brand established in a solid and stable way.

This process is way more complicated than it sounds, and we’ve developed a lot of specific insights and processes over the years that help us work through these elements with clients, but it’s still something you can make good progress with on your own.

Either way, taking the time to really think deeply about these three foundational elements of your brand (and deliberately deriving the verbal, visual, and other aspects of your brand from them) will make a profound difference in the clarity and focus of your brand as a whole.

And by aligning yourself and your staff behind the purpose, values, and style of your company, you’ll find that the way you do business begins to change as well. When the internal operations of your business are genuinely in sync with the customer-facing parts, you’ll find that everything works smoother, and your customers will feel more confident and connected to your brand overall.

ICONS

Icons are the symbolic visual representation of abstract concepts, usually related to the beliefs and values of the tribe. They can take the form of specific images (such as logos, graphics, photos, symbols, letters, or numbers) or more general visual elements (colors, typefaces, patterns, etc.)

PEOPLE

The sacred people of a brand tribe can take a variety of forms:

• The Leader: Some brand tribes have a well-known, charismatic leader (e.g., Steve Jobs for Apple) who personify the brand.
• The Representative (or Role Model): Other tribes have a non-leader spokesperson–or symbolic spokesperson–who can be either real (e.g., Michael Jordan for Nike) or fictional (e.g., Coke’s “Max Headroom”).
• The Ensemble: Moving beyond individuals, some brand tribes can follow the ensemble model, emphasizing multiple brand-related characters rather than a particular individual (e.g., the players on a sports team.)

ANIMALS

In tribal marketing, animals are often used to represent the tribe’s ideals or characteristics. Disney has Mickey Mouse, Budweiser its clydesdale horses, and Merrill Lynch has its bull. Animals create strong symbolic responses in consumers, which makes them an ideal vehicle for promoting the brand tribe’s beliefs and mythology. For some brands (usually more lighthearted ones), these animals can also serve as fictional representatives, such as the Geico gecko.

WORDS AND PHRASES

With the power of language to conjure images, emotions, and memories, the exact words used in tribal marketing are vital to its overall success.

• Jargon: Every brand tribe has key words, sometimes unintelligible outside the tribe, that serve to unite the members and provide shortcuts for common concepts (e.g., Starbucks’ “venti”).
• Emotional triggers: Certain concepts can evoke an emotional reaction for members of the tribe, reminding them of their aspirations and motivations within the tribe (e.g., Nike’s “Just Do It”).
• Explanations: Over time, a tribe will often develop commonly-used explanations for concepts that might be difficult to explain to outsiders. As other members of the tribe hear those explanations, the best and most succinct explanations will tend to be repeated. One common example is how Apple users often explain their user experience to an outsider: “It just works.”
• Quotations: As members of the tribe discuss it, write about it, and share their thoughts with others, certain statements will stand out that embody the beliefs or ideals of the tribe particularly well, and these quotations will often be documented and repeated by other members.

PLACES

Places serve as geographical and contextual anchors for the brand tribe, giving members a way to physically live out certain aspects of the overall brand experience. Stores or offices often serve as sacred places for a brand tribe, but other locations (at a variety of geographic levels) can fulfill the role as well. Examples include Ben & Jerry’s Vermont and Elvis Presley’s Graceland.

SOUNDS

This may apply to some brands more than others, but in an effort to appeal to multiple senses you should try to engage tribe members’ hearing almost as much as you do their vision.

Music is the most common way to do this, as it can be used in retail environments, commercials, etc., but other sounds may include effects (Apple’s classic “bong” startup sound), equipment (coins falling in a slot machine), other consumers (roller coaster screams), or simply a side effect (the “snap, crackle, pop” of Rice Crispies).

These sounds may also include verbal conventions, such as tone of voice, the pronunciation of certain words, or a certain way of delivering a phrase (e.g., the way the receptionist greets clients as they enter).

THE FULL EXPERIENCE

To create a rich tribal marketing experience, you should consider and develop as many of these “sacred objects” as possible. Getting deeply involved in a brand tribe requires that there be substance at each level, so even if many customers never know about these elements, it’s a delight for those Followers and Evangelists who get involved enough to discover them.

Theoretically, cereals–at least the basic, unadorned ones–should be relatively universal. There’s not much about them that predisposes them to any particular demographic or psychographic group. Apart from food allergies or intolerances, basically anyone can eat cereal.

However, the companies creating these cereals realize that “everyone” isn’t a feasible target market, so they intentionally narrow and focus their audiences. While this might seem counterintuitive, this actually gives them the ability to craft a strong, specific message that really resonates with a particular audience, rather than presenting a vague, wishy-washy message to everyone in the world.

Wheaties (wheat and bran flakes from General Mills) and Special K (wheat and rice flakes from Kellogg’s) are two great examples. They’re very similar products, yet their positioning and branding are quite different.

The Wheaties brand has long focused on sports fans as its primary target market, with its tradition of putting athletes on the cereal box and its famous “Breakfast of Champions” tagline. While it’s unlikely many athletes actually eat Wheaties regularly, they’ve successfully built a cultural institution around the implied notion that eating this particular wheat and bran flake will provide you with increased athletic prowess. While many of the athletes featured on the boxes have been female (although too few, many would argue), the brand seems obviously oriented toward a male audience with bold colors, aggressive typography, etc.

On the contrary, Special K marketing is clearly directed at women, with soft curves, soothing typography, lots of pinks and purples, and aspirational images of slender women in dresses, swimsuits, etc. They’ve dominated the market by positioning it as a “diet cereal for women,” coming in second only to the seemingly unconquerable Cheerios.

What’s the difference? Technically, almost none. From a nutritional perspective, there’s little actual difference between Special K and Wheaties. However, both brands have captured the public’s imagination and fascination through clear positioning and strong visual execution of their brand.

Had they given in to their natural instinct to go generic and appeal to everyone (“Try new Kellogg’s Rice Flakes!”), they would have lost everyone and failed to dominate the market. By significantly narrowing their focus to a fractional subset of their audience, they were able to create successful, engaging brands.

– Ludwig Wittgenstein, Austrian philosopher

When I first joined the Forty team, I hoped to infuse a little bit of my passion for improvisation into our work environment. I had no idea exactly what I was doing, but I knew one thing to be true – improv had completely changed my life, and I knew it had the power to completely change Forty as well. We began our exploration of improv with a one-hour session, where we covered a small amount of improvisational theory and discussed how it relates to our world as a branding and marketing agency. Then, we learned a handful of improv exercises to improve our skills. Now, we do 15 minutes of improv every morning before our daily stand-up meeting to get our blood flowing and continue practicing.

Improv is the art of making stuff up on the spot. It’s usually performed on a stage in front of a live audience that gives “suggestions” to inspire the scenes. Every show is completely different. There’s no script, no planning ahead, and the audience and the players have no idea what’s going to happen. People all over the planet practice improv, teach improv, write books about improv, and get paid to perform improv. It’s really become a big deal… and it’s awesome.

Why is improv awesome?

I often tell my colleagues about my trip to Chicago (the mecca of improv) for a workshop and how that experience changed my life. After spending just a few days in Chicago with talented improv directors and performers, I finally started to understand who I was on that trip. It unlocked me in a way that nothing else had. As a result, I fell in love with this art form, and I’ve been hooked ever since.

I often have a hard time putting the greatness of improv into words, and I could write an entire book trying to explain why it’s the greatest thing since Wayne Gretzky. Instead, I’ll share the lucky seven reasons why we practice improv at Forty:

1. Listening

Improv teaches us to listen. There’s nothing more fundamental to understanding people and their needs than being a good listener. Listening isn’t waiting for your turn to speak. It’s truly absorbing and digesting what the other person is saying and how they’re saying it. Improv teaches us absolutely everything is important. If we stop listening for one second, we may miss out on an opportunity to support our teammate’s ideas and make them look brilliant. At Forty, we need to pay attention to everything our clients communicate — written, spoken, or unspoken. We need to listen to the tone and character of the company so well that we know the brand intimately and can develop an authentic experience that really connects with their audience.

2. Support

Improv teaches us how to support each other. “Yes and” is an essential concept in improvisation. It’s a “rule” that’s drilled into the heads of every beginning improviser. The “yes and” rule exists because creativity can’t go anywhere without acceptance and support. In improv, there are no wrong answers, and every choice you make on stage is the right choice. Your teammates accept and receive your choices as “gifts” and their sole focus is on heightening, building, and growing the gift that you’ve given. At Forty, we need to accept creative ideas and give them space to grow. When one of us makes a statement with a brand concept or a design, the rest of us acknowledge and accept the work. Then, we add our own creative input to build it into something even better than it was before.

3. Making statements

Improv teaches us to make bold statements. When performing improv, the cast members need to know how to make statements and commit to those statements. They don’t just stick with their statement. They cling to it and hold on for dear life. In improv, you don’t have the luxury of revisions, the delete key, or (my personal favorite) command-Z. Things get really ugly when all the performers are unsure who they are, where they are, how they know each other, or what the heck is going on. As an audience member, you can tell when they’re stuck in their heads, and you can’t wait for the next scene. At Forty, we want our clients to stand out. We want to help them make bold statements that really connect with their audience in a way their competitors only do in their dreams. If they just want the same brand as everyone else, they came to the wrong theatre.

4. Speaking from the heart

Improv teaches us to go deeper. Each person has such a wide variety of emotions, ideas, and experiences to draw from our lives. Improvisers learn how to tap into that well and let it all out on stage. It makes for really crazy character choices and amazing scene work that leaves an audience breathless. At Forty, we insist on going beyond the obvious. We ask deeper questions. We challenge the notion that businesses only exist to make a profit. What else is there besides the first few design choices that pop into our heads? Improv teaches us to tap into our own internal search engines and pull out all of that awesome, gooey goodness that’s embedded deep within the realm of our experiences.

5. Being flexible

Improv teaches us to be more responsive to change. When someone makes a surprising choice during an improv show, the other players have no choice but to be quick on their feet. When the audience screams out a suggestion, the improvisers don’t have any time to think. They have to just roll with it. The pressure’s as hot as the lights, and it’s time to do something even if nothing is coming to them. At Forty, we believe in being agile, fluid, and flexible. We work iteratively, and we learn as we go. We need to understand nothing is certain, have conviction in our choices, and adapt to the unexpected.

6. Embracing the awkward

Improv teaches us it’s ok to be uncomfortable. I don’t remember a single moment on an improv stage that didn’t feel awkward at first. However, it’s usually the most awkward moments on stage that end up being the most successful. We tend to shy away from uncomfortable situations. When people get too close, have really bad body odor, or want to talk about really sensitive topics, we want to squirm out of that moment as quickly as possible. Improv teaches us to be more candid, honest, straightforward, and to speak from our gut. I’ve seen many different companies suffer from a simple lack of trust, candor, and openness. When people don’t feel like tackling something head-on because it’s strange or awkward, the entire organization gets held back.

7. Achieving group mind

Finally, improv teaches us to trust the power of the group and pursue the elusive phenomenon of group mind. There’s a big difference between groupthink and group mind. Groupthink is lazy and bad. Group mind is one step away from heaven. Groupthink is when a team all says yes to the first idea that pops in their heads, simply because it’s easier to just say yes than to attack the problem together and come up with the best possible solution. Group mind is the holy grail of improv. Group mind is when everyone is listening, “yes and”-ing, making strong statements, speaking from the heart, adapting to changes, and embracing the awkward in perfect harmony. Each member of the team knows when it’s his or her turn to contribute. Everyone knows their roles and speaks with conviction and respect. The team is buzzing with creativity, energy, and enthusiasm. Improv reminds us we’re a team, where everyone trusts each other. We all know each member is here to build one another up and make each of our ideas better. We can honestly believe the work we come up with as a group will be a million times better than what we would have come up with on our own.

For us, improv isn’t just about being silly and having fun for a few minutes every morning. It’s a great way to build our team, improve our creative process, and build our own personal communication skills. We practice improv because it exercises those muscles required to be sincerely engaged, present, and responsive. We want to develop real human connections with each other, with our clients, and between our client’s brand and their target audience.

*photo credit – Brandi Sims

One of these five dimensions, the “Power Distance Index” (or PDI), measures the extent to which major differences between the most powerful and the least powerful (the “haves and have-nots”) are accepted within the culture.

The lowest Power Distance scores belong to countries that strongly emphasize equality, opportunities to rise in society, etc. The lowest-scoring countries on the index are Austria, Israel, Denmark, New Zealand, and Ireland.

Austria's low PDI score

In contrast, the highest Power Distance scores belong to countries where massive differences between the powerful and the powerless are normal and accepted parts of life. Countries with large Power Distance scores include Malaysia, Guatemala, Panama, the Philippines, and Mexico.

Malaysia's high PDI

Hofstede’s cultural dimensions can be applied to companies as well, and each of them (including Power Distance) can have a significant effect on the way that company handles their marketing efforts.

Imagine what happens inside the marketing department of a high Power Distance company:

• Apart from numbers in spreadsheets, employees rarely notice any observable difference created by their actions.
• Employees are expected to stay in their place and not make waves.
• People who can actually make important decisions are inaccessible, protected by layers of middle management.
• Managers view employees who challenge norms or questioning decisions as disrespecting their authority.
• Priority is placed on never making embarrassing mistakes, making it difficult to take a stand on anything.
• Managers are looking for immediately demonstrable results, leading to a focus on tactics over strategy.
• The powerful feel they have so much to lose that they instinctively go on the defense, only approving safe, comfortable, familiar solutions.

To help clarify what brand archetypes are all about, here are three examples with which you’re probably already familiar.

HARLEY DAVIDSON (THE MAVERICK)

This quintessential American brand is built around the Maverick archetype, which personifies a willingness to defy (or destroy) social conventions and challenge “normal” behavior.

As the Harley Davidson brand came to be associated with outlaw behavior (thanks to movies and press coverage of rebellious bikers gangs), their motorcycles allowed people to escape from their routine lives. The ride came to symbolize leaving

it all behind and forging a new path. While most customers didn’t literally make this change in their lives, their participation in the brand helped them find a healthy balance with the responsibilities in other areas of their life.

NIKE (THE ACHIEVER)

The Nike brand is all about pushing the limits of human performance, which is a perfect manifestation of the Achiever archetype. The company’s co-founder, Bill Bowerman, once observed, “if you have a body, you are an athlete,” hinting at the nearly infinite potential they see for humans in sport (as well as their desire to bring performance-mindedness to a broad audience).

Nike talks about winning with almost religious fervor and reverence, which is appropriate given that Nike was the Greek goddess of victory. For example, their 2010 “Write the Future” campaign, revolved around a three-minute film showing some of the world’s greatest athletes in do-or-

die situations. It vividly portrayed the emotional extremes that can come from their performance in those decisive moments.

While the products themselves contain a tremendous amount of quality and attention to detail, Nike (wisely) almost never talks about their actual products. Instead, they simply provide the religious experience and trust that consumers who feel themselves moved by that experience will take the time to learn about the products later. Their $19 billion annual revenue would seem to indicate this focus on archetype-driven emotional experiences over logical arguments has been successful.

Imagine what Nike would look like if they had simply promoted the features and benefits of their shoes. Would the company even still exist?

VICTORIA’S SECRET (THE SENSUALIST)

Most Victoria’s Secret customers don’t realize the brand is based around a fictional woman named Victoria, a manor-born Londoner who serves as an stand-in for the store’s customers: responsible women facing a wide range of unexciting obligations, who still (perhaps secretly) want to indulge in the physical pleasures they’ve been missing.

This aspect of their customers’ everyday experiences is represented by the Sensualist, the archetype that discovers and maximizes physical pleasure.

While Victoria’s Secret has ranged over the years from classy and sophisticated to outrightly sexual—and even Chief Executive Sharen J. Turney agrees they have wandered too far from their roots—the direction provided by their focus on the Sensualist archetype (consciously or otherwise) has helped to turn Victoria’s Secret into a household name, setting it far, far apart from its competitors in the marketplace.

Coke is an olive branch

In many of their campaigns over the years, Coca- Cola has used the brand metaphor of an olive branch, a symbol of peace dating from the 5th century BC in Greece, where it was associated with the goddess of peace, Eirene.

The symbol was later adopted in early Christianity, with St. Augustine writing that “perpetual peace is indicated by the olive branch which the dove brought with it when it returned to the ark.” While the symbol is rarely used literally anymore in contemporary contexts, the symbolic reference has remained part of Western culture to the present day.

Over the course of at least five decades, Coca-Cola has been using this brand metaphor to imply that the beverage has an almost magical ability to bring peace (either temporarily or permanently), between conflicting parties.

Apple liberates us from a dystopian future

Apple’s “1984” commercial introducing the Macintosh computer (developed by Chiat/ Day and directed by Ridley Scott) portrays an unnamed heroine saving humanity from conformity, borrowing elements of George Orwell’s famous novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four. Orwell’s story describes an authoritarian future, where citizens are forced into obedience and indoctrinated by propaganda from the televised “Big Brother.”

Prior to previewing the commercial at the 1983 Apple Keynote address, Steve Jobs said, “It is now 1984. It appears IBM wants it all…. Dealers initially welcoming IBM with open arms now fear an IBM dominated and controlled future. They are increasingly turning back to Apple as the only force that can ensure their future freedom.”

Their strong use of brand metaphor, extending and infusing it with their own ideas (making it unique from the novel that inspired it), resulted in this commercial being one of the most memorable and successful American television commercials of all time.

It’s probably the smallest of all logo deliverables. Often, it’s just a single word. But the craftsmanship that goes into that word gives it a density that makes it unlike any other marketing deliverable. You might spend 10 hours writing a big marketing document, but you could easily spend ten times that long crafting the perfect one-word document that is a brand name. It has to be a powerhouse.

It’s unfortunate that so many businesses feel stuck with names that do very little for them. In the frenzy to get started, many businesses wind up forever branded with whatever sounded good at an early lunch meeting between the founders. Often it’s something that sounds comfortable and vaguely positive (“Advanced Systems,” “Pinnacle Consulting,” “Synergy Group,” etc.) or just the founders names. It’s rarely something that’s gone through an actual branding exercise. Then, as the business matures they start to feel like it’s “too late to change,” even though it’ll actually never be easier than it is right now. (If the business is growing, after all, it only gets harder as time passes.)

Brand naming isn’t just fluffy marketing stuff. It’s a money thing. Check this out:

Your multimillion dollar company has a generic, vaguely positive name. You spend $250,000 on sales and marketing, trying to remind people you exist and that they should remember you. And you’re swimming upstream, because the natural tendency is to ignore or forget you.

Now, what would happen if your company name were shorter, more evocative, easier to pronounce, more poetic, and more memorable? What if it were actually a cool name instead of a boring corporate one? How much less might you have to spend on marketing every year? Or how much more effective would that marketing be? Sure, there’ll be some transition time where you have to work on changing the name everywhere, but overall, what kind of impact would that have on your annual revenue over the next five years?

Do the math, and then decide if spending the money rename your company is really as crazy as it might sound on the surface. Once you actually run the numbers, you’ll find this stuff actually starts to make a lot of sense!

As they continue to grow in popularity, I’ve been left wondering if they’re really worth all the hype. Like many trends, there seems to be a lot of people jumping on the QR code bandwagon. Some are into it for the right reasons, and some just want to be part of the new, hot craze. I’ve seen tons of articles by staunch supporters who think QR codes are the coolest thing since Facebook, as well as skeptics who debate it’s a whole lot of fuss over nothing. My take on the QR code conundrum: it’s just another tactic that should only be used if it fits into your overall marketing strategy and aligns with your goals and audience.

Some companies have figured it out and know how to incorporate QR codes appropriately. For instance, MasterCard just launched their new “Priceless New York” campaign. Their goal is to broaden their reach, encourage people to share their positive interaction with MasterCard, and increase brand awareness. To do so, MasterCard put QR codes on 20 seats at Yankee Stadium with a simple prompt to scan them. The code takes fans to the installation’s Facebook page, where they enter to receive tickets for MasterCard’s cafe at the stadium by checking in, “liking” the page, or opting in to a email list. The promotion is catchy, has clear instructions, and fits their target audience and campaign goals.

On the other hand, there are those who seem to have fumbled the ball. Jay Baer recently posted a great example of a QR code fail. The Crowne Plaza could have done a better job at taking design, relevance, simplicity, and purpose into account when they used their QR code. They could have thought more about sizing the code appropriately, giving the consumer a clear call to action or good reason to scan it, making sure the landing page works, and most of all, ensuring the code aligned with their purpose and goals. Instead, the QR code campaign actually creates barriers to getting people to sign up for the promotion.

The moral of the story is QR codes aren’t a total waste of time, but as with any other trend, think it through before using them. You may be convinced a QR code campaign will make you look cool and cutting edge, but be careful to not try so hard to look awesome at the expense of being awesome.

In the end, it all comes back to the basics: avoid jumping into a new marketing tactic until you have a solid understanding of your audience, strategy, and message. You need substance and style. Your customers don’t need another place to hear what you have to say. They need a clearer, more compelling message. They’re craving a brand that quenches their thirst for inspiration, identity, and creativity instead of one that just creates more noise.

What’s your take? Do QR codes win your heart or fail to deliver?

If you’re a service firm, for example, try posting your prices instead of requiring potential clients to work to get a price. It’ll build trust and comfort, and establish your price as a baseline for others.

What information would your customers love to have that most of your competitors don’t talk openly about?

Once you’ve thought of some, be sure to check out our other marketing ideas.

Every document your company produces is an opportunity to emphasize and clarify what your company is all about. Spec sheets, contracts, invoices, receipts, employee handbooks, signage, etc., are all important tools in the overall effort to clarify your company’s position in the minds of your customers and employees.

Why bother? Because people probably see those documents more frequently, and pay closer attention to them, than they do your actual sales materials. The simple, day-to-day interactions customers and employees have with your company are where most branding and positioning actually happen. Make sure they’re conveying what you want them to convey.

Here are some quick tips for turning a lifeless “informational” document into an effective positioning document (without compromising its usefulness or making it overly promotional):

• Visual design: Make sure that the document fits the visual brand of the rest of the company, and that it would look perfectly natural sitting alongside your sales and marketing pieces.
• Writing style: Carry the company’s brand voice throughout the document. This may be tricky with legal documents, but on something like an employee handbook, there’s no excuse for generic corporate boilerplate. Make it sound the way you want your team to sound.
• Positioning statement: Never miss an opportunity to remind people who you are, what you do, and what makes your company unique. It can be short (a single sentence will suffice), but it should appear almost everywhere.
• Vivid scenarios: Add emotion, realism, relevance, and context to your documents to help the reader understand the vision you’re trying to convey. If you’re sending a spec sheet for a piece of machinery, don’t just list facts and figures, but take time to show how it makes people feel, what role it plays in their daily work, etc.
• Call to action: This is possibly the simplest step, yet one of the most often overlooked. If you’re sending information to a potential, tell them what you want them to do next, and point them in the right direction.

As a designer, I’ve found that providing a screencast of a new idea to our clients enables me to think clearly through everything I want to express, present it without interruption, and significantly reduce my presentation stress. Screencasting allows me to calmly walk our clients through the research and analysis of the project and lead them through our recommendations. By doing this in a screencast format, the idea comes through as a complete thought process rather than a jumble of nerves and random ideas.

Screencasts have been really well-received by our clients. They’re able to listen to our ideas and absorb the vision without any pressure or demand for an immediate reaction. They’ve told us it’s an easy way for them to digest the information, and it allows them to share the full thought process with other stakeholders in it’s original, unedited form.

I recently heard a story that perfectly parallels why we feel screencasting is such a great medium for our clients. Historically, state fair judges were expected to make their decisions and critiques on-the-spot before the audience. However, the judges recently revised their methods and now make their decisions in private. Now, they can make solid decisions based on thoughtful analysis without influence from the crowds.

Likewise, we shouldn’t look to our clients to provide us with instant, on-the-spot feedback. New ideas can sometimes be a little scary, and therefore, gut reactions aren’t always accurate. As designers, we’ve probably been staring at a project for days, weeks, or even months, and we often forget a client might need the same time to sit and absorb an idea before providing thoughtful feedback.

Removing pressure from all parties helps lower everyone’s defenses and pave the way for better collaboration. This screencasting process has been working really well for us here at Forty, and we highly recommend it for sharing your work. If you are curious about what a screencast might entail, you can view the example below of a visual strategy walk-through that we did for our client, On Good Authority (watch for their new website this fall!).

Now it’s your turn. What methods have you used to present ideas? What has worked, and what hasn’t?

Take Kinko’s. Founder Paul Orfalea gave us the name Kinko’s from the nickname given to him for his curly red hair. This company of humble beginnings kept the fun and catchy name for more than 40 years before the merger with the FedEx brand. FedEx now wants to phase out the Kinko’s name entirely, in favor of “FedEx Office.” But when I need to print 50 formal invitations in a hurry, I still search online for the nearest Kinko’s. So, why would a company mess with a good, strong name and brand? Their vision that FedEx isn’t just about deliveries prompted them to take a stand by putting the FedEx name in the place of the household name Kinko’s.

If you’re over 30, your warehouse style shopping might have started at the local Price Club (originally named for warehouse pioneer, Sol Price). The name lasted for years, before their big merger with retail giant Costco, resulting in the name PriceCostco. Later it was shortened to simply Costco. It took years for folks to make the mental switch, and many people still call it Price Club.

These names become a part of our language, our culture, and our daily experiences. Should a company change their name when they’ve already got a strong following? It’s an important question for businesses to consider when they’re on the verge of additional growth.

These rituals can be small, simple actions, such as breaking a Kit-Kat candy in half, twisting apart an Oreo cookie, or placing a lime slice in the neck of a Corona; or they can be more elaborate, multi-step “ceremonies” such as a luxury hotel carefully preparing a room for the next guest.

Generally speaking, the more complicated brand rituals should be on the side of those who are most deeply involved in the brand, usually paid employees. The less brand interaction there is for a particular individual, the simpler and more efficient the rituals should be.

When a compelling, memorable ritual is created, suggested, and reinforced, it can serve as a great way to keep people physically involved in the brand tribe, giving it more prominence in the overall mix of brands that people deal with on a daily basis.

It’s easy to find examples of dehumanized futures in film: The Matrix, Equilibrium, Brazil, A Clockwork Orange, Terminator, The Road Warrior, Children of Men, WALL-E, Delicatessen, A.I., Waterworld, Blade Runner, 12 Monkeys, RoboCop, V for Vendetta, Gattaca, Dark City, District 13, I Robot, The City of Lost Children, and Akira are a just a few examples of films in which the loss of humanity is a central theme.

These movies resonate deeply with viewers because they’re metaphorical representations of very real emotions and frustrations we feel every day of our lives:

• Corporations have come to care more about profits than people
• Technology and convenience have taken the place of connection and intimacy
• Our leaders have become disconnected from the reality we’re dealing with daily
• We feel like cogs in a machine, valued more for the role we fill than we we actually bring to it
• Our lives are full of constant, unrealistic demands on our time and attention
• We’re over-stimulated by relentless wastes of time
• We face ever-decreasing opportunities to simply “be human”

More than a decade ago, the authors of the famous Cluetrain Manifesto wrote that “Markets consist of human beings, not demographic sectors.” Yet, to this day, many advertising and marketing agencies–despite a lot of talk about “brands” and “strategy” and “creativity”–still show a remarkable disregard for the basic elements of humanity.

It’s really easy to see why this happens. Humanity is some seriously complicated stuff. It’s subtle, weird, touchy-feely, difficult to measure, and driven more by instinct than numbers.

Executives obviously don’t want to hear that. They want numbers. They want reports. They want proof. They want quick results. So, they wind up making the same short-term, tactical decisions that have created the increasingly disconnected, disenfranchised, and dehumanized.

It’s just not a sustainable way to do business. Sure, you’ll make some amount of easy-to-measure progress, but your business won’t explode, it won’t gather a thriving tribe, it won’t become a household name with that kind of approach.

Customers are human. They crave human experiences. Done right, marketing should draw inspiration from almost every aspect of our everyday lives: psychology, sociology, physiology, behavior, history, literature, art, music, culture, science, philosophy, religion, culture, tribes, families, romance, identity, affiliation, aspiration, etc. It’s a lot more than just conversions and engagement scores.

It’s actually not difficult to get started. You’re human, right? You’re probably feeling the same frustrations your customers are. All you have to do is figure out how to run your business in a way that solves their problems instead of creating new ones. It’s not only possible, it’s actually the most sustainable, healthy, and profitable way to grow your company.

This tribal doctrine can include the following:

• Creed: The core of the brand tribe’s doctrine is its creed: a simplified, one-sentence statement that summarizes the tribe’s goal, its reason for existing.
• Values: Values are specific, personal, and attainable attributes to which members of the brand tribe strive. They should reflect, among other things, the ideal traits characterized by the tribe’s brand archetype or brand metaphor.
• Commandments: The commandments are specific actions that, when executed diligently, will bring members of the tribe closer to achieving their creed and values. They are signposts directing individuals down what is believed to be the most correct path.
• Vision: Every brand tribe has a conceptual image of how they will improve the world, and what that world will be like when they are done. This vision serves as a unifying reminder of what the individual members are working for.
• Demons: In its efforts to promote its doctrine, the brand tribe must necessarily come into conflict with other individuals, ideas, or competing brands. Every tribe has natural enemies, and it’s prudent to identify and understand them as part of the tribes overall strategy for survival and growth.

Yeah, they may be a bit smaller than your main market, but think of the possibilities associated with targeting a few select smaller ones. Or even one incredibly influential group. These groups are out there, you just have to find creative ways to reach them.

For instance, if you’re in the business of selling peanut butter, moms who do the grocery shopping for their families are probably the most obvious (and oversaturated) market, but other underserved markets also exist for peanut butter, such as dieters, dog owners (medicine can be dispensed inside a PB glob), bakers, etc.

Got your new markets all laid out? Great! Check out our other creative marketing ideas.

• Service
• Quality
• Respect
• Honesty
• Integrity
• Fairness
• Teamwork
• Reponsibility
• Trustworthiness
• etc.

This is perfectly normal and natural. When you’re deeply invested in a business, especially in the early years, you have to really believe in what you’re doing. That dedication unfortunately tends to manifest itself as a demonization of your competitors; consciously or unconsciously, you’ll tend to slip into the assumption that the “other guys” are a bunch of either disreputable villains or talentless hacks (or sometimes both).

You almost have to believe this to keep going. You never say “We’re the 4th best in the market.” It’s always “We’re the absolute best there is! Our quality is unsurpassed, and our customer service is amazing.”

Unfortunately, the other guys all believe the same thing about themselves. The actual customer is hearing the same message from everyone, and they’re thinking “Customer service, yeah, yeah, but what makes you different?”

Nobody wants to hear you talk about your customer service (or your quality, or your integrity, etc.). This is one of the most basic rules of marketing. It’s not because these things aren’t important–they are!–but because they’re a entry-level expectations, and are therefore assumed unless you give them reason to believe otherwise. They don’t make you great, they just make you not an immediate failure. It’s like telling your customers that you brushed your teeth and put on clean underwear this morning. Not only are they not impressed, they’re probably confused as to why you felt like you even had to bring it up at all.

Often, attempts to base marketing on The Defaults come across as defensive damage control. When the newspaper reveals a company as having the worst service in their industry, that’s when they start talking about customer service in their ads. When a product gets recalled, you suddenly start seeing a lot of quality-related promotions from the manufacturer. Don’t fall into the trap of sounding like you’ve done something wrong by trying to promote how competent you are at the basics.

The Defaults are also a terrible way to position your company, because every one of your competitors thinks they’re aces at the same thing, making it impossible for your customers to actually tell the difference. Even if you are the best, there’s still no marketing equity in talking about it. It just doesn’t resonate with customers.

Your point of uniqueness must be something your competitors won’t also claim. Every business owner wants to shout “But really, we are the best!”, and it may well be true, but there’s still no marketing juice there. Skip the Defaults and figure out what actually makes your company unique.

There’s always something deeper, something more interesting. That’s where the magic is. Push through the obvious answers, and you’ll find that little gem inside that will make all the difference for your company.

This short-termism has created a business environment where people talk about ROI in over-simplified numbers. Reality doesn’t fit on a spreadsheet, so we focus on the video game scores, trying to use short-term metrics as proof that we’re doing our jobs well.

Executives are wary of the non-numeric aspects of business, so they make the colossal mistake of focusing almost exclusively on short-term, easily-measurable gains: hits, clicks, conversions, followers, fans, signups, etc. They make short-term, tactical changes to optimize those numbers, mistakenly thinking that higher scores means better business.

In the process, they lose sight of the bigger picture. They increase their Google AdWords spend or host a Twitter contest or manufacture a web traffic spike, and then show those numbers to their boss as “proof” that it’s working.

But it’s not working. The actual problem was that nobody understood what the company was about in the first place, or they came across as antagonistic, or they looked old-fashioned. They’re in a big branding hole, trying to dig themselves out with numbers — and it’s not working.

We’ve been trained to think of ROI as a pretty number that guarantees your boss will be impressed with you. It’s not. ROI is what actually happens, not the pretty number.

• When you spend your budget juicing your short-term numbers, and the business fails because your spreadsheet couldn’t explain that nobody trusted your brand, that’s your actual ROI.
• When you tweak keywords to increase your lead gathering percentage, but nobody on your mailing list actually buys anything because they don’t understand what you do, that’s your actual ROI.
• When you hire an SEO specialist to improve your search rankings, but you’re directing them to vague website that fails to capture their attention, that’s your actual ROI.

All the “touchy-feely stuff” (branding, emotion, reputation, perception, connotation, etc.) significantly affects your bottom line. Your ROI is directly affected by your company’s brand.

The hard part is remembering how important the complexity of branding is when you look at all the simple and enticing short-term metrics.

You just have to ask yourself whether it’s more important to win in the short term, or win in the long term.

First, we needed a name for the umbrella brand. We wanted it to be explanatory, but creative to stand out in a sea of sameness. After some extensive research and brainstorming, we decided on Detektor to refer to the products’ benefits (with a modified spelling as a tribute to its high-tech features). The logo is an extension of this concept, with the “o” inspired by the blinking LED light on their alert devices.

Then, we started working on the identity for Detektor’s first product, FireCat. This rekindle and intrusion detection kit helps firefighters protect a property after a fire without having to stay on guard at the site. FireCat can be set up at a location after a fire has been extinguished, and it will immediately text the firefighters if the fire reignites or someone breaks in. With FireCat in place, firefighters can return to the firehouse after an exhausting job to rest and refuel without having to worry.

To prepare for their first trade show, we rallied the troops to develop a logo, color palette, and materials, including a banner, leave-behind flyer, and one-page website.

FireCat’s logo was designed as an abstract representation of a cat’s face, mixed with a strong and secure presence. The colors were inspired by fire and attention-grabbing hues.

When they debuted the new brand and products at the trade show, the Detektor team was swarmed with visitors and positive feedback.

With all the positive reaction to Detektor’s first introduction, we’re excited to see it ignite as we continue to develop the branding for their other products!

The name “Häagen-Dazs” doesn’t actually mean anything. It’s not an ancient Danish city, or the name of two Swiss ice cream masters, or anything of the sort.

The name was made up by Jewish-Polish immigrant Reuben Mattus, who sat at his kitchen table in the Bronx for hours, mumbling nonsense words, trying to name the ice cream shop he and his wife Rose would open in 1976.

Early packaging included a map of Denmark and mentioned Copenhagen by name, conjuring a very specific and intriguing experience for ice cream customers, despite there being no actual Scandinavian connection.

The concept of authenticity is critical to contemporary branding, but brands like Häagen-Dazs bring up an interesting question: what exactly does “authenticity” mean?

Mattus was trying to create a unique experience for his customers, and he liked the idea of a Scandinavian-themed ice cream brand. Given the response the public had to the brand, his instincts were obviously right.

Was Mattus being deceptive with his brand naming choice? Should he have given it some Jewish-Polish-Bronx name instead? (“Mmm…delicious Jewponx!”)

Or was he being genuine and true to his vision, cleverly crafting the brand experience he wanted to create with the cultural building blocks at his disposal?

It’s hard to draw clear lines on the issue of authenticity in marketing, but I personally side with Mattus on this one. The origin of the product doesn’t actually matter. It’s a great product, and the ingeniously well-crafted name adds an enjoyable layer to the brand experience that takes it beyond the product itself. I believe it would have been inauthentic for Mattus not to name his ice cream store Häagen-Dazs.

But that’s just my opinion. What are your thoughts? Where do you draw the line with authentic branding?

With this in mind, it’s worth noting that tribal marketing applies not just to consumer-facing marketing, but also to internal business operations. It’s just as important and relevant to paid employees as it is to paying customers.

There are several degrees of membership in tribal marketing:

• Chief: single individual ultimately responsible for guiding and protecting the brand tribe; should be fully dedicated to the living tribe’s beliefs and values; typically a CEO
• Elders: group of individuals responsible for advising and assisting the chief in guiding and protecting the brand tribe; usually comprises executives or managers
• Priesthood: individuals who are responsible for developing and promoting the beliefs and values of the brand tribe to its followers; typically paid employees of an organization
• Evangelists: tribe members who may not be formally responsible for promoting doctrine, but who do it out of personal love for the brand; can include engaged customers, dedicated fans, contractors, strategic partners, and others
• Followers: individuals who are not actively engaged in promoting the doctrine of the brand tribe, but who appreciate and support its beliefs and values; includes customers, potential customers, and new fans
• Inactives: members on the outside edge of the brand tribe, who may not yet be fully converted (or even aware of ) its beliefs and values; may include low-engagement customers, potential customers, vendors, etc.

(Not every brand tribe follows this structure, of course. Some tribes are formed spontaneously by Evangelists and Followers, for example.)

In tribal marketing, the lines between “us” and “them” are ideally blurred. There should be one unified tribe around your brand, with people engaging with it in a wide variety of ways.

The most important meeting of the day is our morning Standup, which runs roughly from 9:15 to 9:45 every workday. During Standup, we stand in front of the boards and review each project, one-by-one, to review the following questions:

• What tasks were completed the previous workday?
• What should we be doing today?
• Are there any obstacles to accomplishing those tasks?

Each project takes maybe 2-4 minutes to discuss, depending on how much is going on that day.

As we go through each project and discuss what we’re doing, we remove tasks from the Project Boards and assign them to individuals on the Daily Board, reflecting our commitments for the day.

Every individual is responsible for selecting their own commitments for the day, and they’re encouraged not to overcommit themselves. (If you finish everything early, you can always go back to the board for more later.)

Because of the number of projects we have, we’ve actually broken our main project board into two separate boards: one for Monday/Wednesday projects, and one for Tuesday/Thursday projects. (We use Friday as a catch-up day.) We’re dedicating the same amount of time to each project over the course of a week, we’re just splitting it up differently to allow us to focus on fewer projects in any given day, allowing for longer blocks of concentrated time.

The result of using Hinge and holding Standup every morning is that it’s almost impossible to drop the ball on a project. With six people looking at the board, reviewing every project, and with all tasks explicitly written down, assigned, and committed to by the person who’ll be doing it, there’s just no way for something to slip through the cracks.

We’re able to get through an amazing amount of work with a high degree of efficiency, thanks to a bit of accountability and communication. Hinge and Standup get our team in sync every morning, and it’s essential to keeping our projects on track without needing project managers.

Behold, the answer to our summer blues—the first annual Fortissimo celebration!

Earlier this year, we decided to pick a week to celebrate our values (humanity, visions, relationships, openness, and growth), our culture, and you, the Forty Nation. This idea has evolved into Fortissimo, a week of fun activities and traditions, including improv, a game night, bowling, and the famous “hot-dog meetup.”

Late summer can be a drag. Spice it up by joining us the week of August 22! Stay tuned for details on how you can be part of the celebration.

The three biggest “human factors” are affiliation, aspiration, and identity, and all of those are emotionally-driven goals. How can your product or service tap into those?

Skip the rational arguments, and appeal to those hard-to-reach emotions instead. It’ll give you a stronger personal connection, and set you apart from your competitors.

Once you’ve done that, check out some of our other marketing ideas.

Long ago, I did some consulting for an Arizona bank that did some research and found, much to their surprise, that the majority of their customers were Hispanic. Somehow this information hadn’t bubbled up to the executive level, and it took them by surprise. The data they’d been looking at had revealed this before, and they quickly realized that some of their customer communication problems were due to their complete misunderstanding of their customer base. Without the research, they’d have continued to drift along cluelessly.

On the other hand, the majority of market research is junk. It’s hard to measure this stuff, and even when you can measure it, it’s hard to know how to interpret it. Surveys lie. Focus groups lie. Interviews lie. Financial reports lie. It’s good to get whatever data you can, but it takes a seasoned professional to know how to wade through that information and decide what’s relevant and what should be thrown out.

If you’re a parent, you might be familiar with the experience of getting an ultrasound of your unborn baby. You’re looking at bunch of fuzzy nothingness on the screen, while the technician points out “Look, it’s a boy!” and “Ooh, strong arms!” and “He’s gonna be a tall one.” Meanwhile, you just feel a little depressed that what you thought was a face turned out to be a butt cheek, and you could swear you saw Elvis in there at one point too. The expert has learned to see things that could easily mislead or confuse the untrained eye. Market research works the same way.

Here are some quick tips for sorting out the useful from the irrelevant:

• Don’t discount instinct: The human brain can absorb and interpret information faster than any computer can. Both the client and the agency will have important gut instincts that should be considered seriously.
• Question data sources: If an agency tells you that 75% of your customers are female, ask them how they know. Where did they get that data? Is it a reliable source? What research methods were used?
• Use ethnography: Ethnography is the act of observing people in their natural environment, which can provide much more accurate data surveys or interviews can
• Work with experts: Market research requires a subtle touch, and you should find someone who has the experience to interpret results effectively, and the clarity to explain the findings in plain English.
• Be ready to change your assumptions: If you think your customers are one thing, but the data consistently points somewhere else, be ready to give up your assumptions. It can be hard to change your worldview, but sometimes that’s the only thing keeping you from making an important change.
• Iterate: You might not know everything up front, so test some ideas and see how they work. When in doubt, do something.

Typically, you would put on a good show and hope they eventually come back to buy, but there are often ways you can connect with customers even before they make a choice, so you can build a relationship and follow up when your competitors can’t.

A great example is a free download of something upon entering your email address – you give ‘em something to remember you by, but retain their info for following up.

If this doesn’t work for you, we’ve got plenty of other marketing ideas you can choose from!

Their first rule, the “Rule of Leadership,” states that it’s better to be first than it is to be better.

“How did the leader achieve its leadership? Not by introducing a better product or service. Invariably the leader in the category got to be the leader by being the first brand in the category.”

It just doesn’t work that way anymore. The speed at which the market moves now, combined with a massive amount of online information regarding product superiority, as well as a tremendous number of options in almost any category, has render their first rule almost completely obsolete.

How many businesses can you name that were the first in their category? First mp3 player? First online bookseller? First online shoe store? First department store? First digital camera? First smart phone? First tablet?

In each of those cases, the household name that comes to mind instantly wasn’t the first in the category, it was the underdog who out-innovated and out-designed the original.

In many ways, being first can actually put you at a disadvantage. You take all the painful lessons of the first one in a category, and while you’re nursing your wounds, a new player jumps in and surpasses you because you couldn’t recover fast enough.

There are a few cases where it makes sense. If being first allows you to tie up all the intellectual property, you’ve got a good shot. Or if you can keep innovating fast enough to perpetually stay in front of the underdogs nipping at your heels, you’re golden. Both of these scenarios are pretty rare, though.

While it’s still healthy to get out into a newish category with little competition, don’t count on it giving you any significant strategic advantage over time. What keeps you in business is how hard you push and how fast you can change. Once you get weak on those areas, you’re on your way out.

We’ve tried countless project management applications, trying to find one that can meet the demanding criteria of a team like ours, which include:

• Efficiency: We have to be able to create, modify, reschedule, and reassign tasks almost instantly. Sadly, most software systems bury this under a series of clicks, checks, dropdowns, submits, and drags-and-drops until it takes so long to log a task that you don’t even want to do it.
• Passive awareness: In order to keep everyone generally aware of what’s going on with the team as a whole, we need to visualize our daily workload, and see our progress over the course of each day. Most systems specialize in hiding that kind of information, creating an environment where you’re only aware of your own responsibilities (unless you go look something up).
• Accountability: Because we review the previous day’s work every morning, we need a system that easily allows us to view what was accomplished recently. Many project management applications bury completed, or at least make them difficult to review for team discussion.
• Simplicity: We already have too many windows open. We don’t need more windows.
• Flexibility: If we decide we need a new list, or a new kind of list, or a new board altogether, we shouldn’t have to go through the chore of reassigning tasks one at a time. We should be able to do that on the fly without much hassle.
• Weight: If you’re assigned a task in an online project management system, it’s easy to forget about it or ignore it. All you have to do is not look at that to-do list! We want a system where your commitments have weight, and nag until you finish them.

Those are just a few of the things we were looking for in a system that met our peculiar needs.

Fortunately, we found a system that works beautifully for us, and has served admirably for more than two years now: Post-it notes.

We currently have five whiteboards with dozens of Post-it notes on each, constantly churning over the course of the week. Our entire company runs on Post-it notes. We have it down to a science. In fact, we’ve even named our process Hinge since it’s flexible, helps us keep everything in tact, and allows us to pivot at a moment’s notice.

No matter how large the project, how tight the deadline, or how critical the task, the noble Post-it notes have enabled us to manage projects in a way that makes “dropping the ball” almost inconceivable. Everything gets done, all the time, forever.

And best of all…it’s fun.

We’ll write up more the details about our system in coming weeks and months, but in the meantime, you should consider giving up the quest to find the perfect project management software, and just grab a Post-it pad and a Sharpie. You’ll be amazed at what you can accomplish.

But what happens after the revolution? You’ve survived the first few years as a business, and you start to realize that it’s not about proclamations and gunfire anymore. Now you’ve got work to do. After revolution comes nation-building.

This is where things get difficult, because the people who are great at revolution are often terrible at nation-building. Or, they get sucked so deep into nation-building that they forget what the revolution was all about and become bureaucrats instead.

As your business evolves, you must stay true to your ideals, but your brand does have to evolve and mature over time. You’ll miss the adrenaline of gunfire and door-kicking, but to thrive in business your brand must adapt and mature. The real revolution is in the practical details that unfold over years and decades.

If you don’t stay true to your ideals, though, someone will come along later and depose you as you did the last one. You have to simultaneously be a nation-builder and a revolutionary.

When designing a website, you might consider the “30-and-30″ rule:

I should be able to get what I need in 30 seconds, but there should also be enough interesting content to keep me involved for 30 minutes.

Your first priority in the site design is certainly the 30-second skimmer, but consider also including enough interesting content to satisfy the 30-minute explorer as well. This is someone who’s really interested in what you’re all about, and they’re likely to become your best evangelists because they feel like they really know what your brand is about.

It seems like this pace is just normal for them. They thrive off their thirst for perfection. They’re addicted to hustle. They have a superior work ethic, or perhaps, they’re one of the few who have turned a passion into their job so that it doesn’t really feel like work.

Maybe. Maybe a good leader has these qualities and truly can’t ever escape all the work and the constant pressure. Maybe a good leader is always trying to be one step ahead of the pack. Maybe a good leader is always pushing hard so they can feel like they’re making a difference every single day. Maybe that’s a part of the equation. Maybe.

A really great leader, however, is one who can incorporate some chill time into his or her routine.

When leaders take the time to chill and do something that’s completely out of their normal routine, they’re allowing themselves to be inspired, even if it’s from unexpected sources. Chill time gives leaders a deeper well to draw from, especially when it’s rooted in new experiences. Leaders should make a habit out of deliberately derailing their routine. It keeps their minds fresh and their wits sharp. It jars their spirit and prevents their body from some serious stress-inflicted decay.

No, I’m not talking about a vacation. Vacations don’t really happen for these people. Trust me. They’ll find a way to work on their “vacations” because they don’t really enjoy vacations. That’s the problem – this isn’t something they’re necessarily “supposed to enjoy.”

• Addition: You can add something to the situation, improving or enhancing it in some way.
• Multiplication: You can transform the situation by putting everything you’ve got into it, suddenly turning it into a much larger situation altogether.
• Subtraction: You can chip away at the situation, depleting it by taking something away.
• Division: You can split the situation up into smaller, less powerful situations.

It’s something to think about next time you’re in a meeting or having a conversation with someone. Instead of selfishly subtracting or deviously dividing, is there some way you can add to (or, even better, multiply) what’s happening in front of you?

The team at Toyota was brilliant to design the Prius so unlike the other cars on the road. It makes that brand stand apart from the crowd, and if you see something that looks different you believe it really is different. Buyers are basically buying a car that proclaims “I want people to know I care about the environment.” They’ve earned tremendous brand value because the car has become an icon for the green movement.

What do you think? Does it matter more to you when people see you making particular choices?

In order to stand out amongst a sea of similarity, try your hand at writing out everything that they actually do, then spend a little more time thinking of the exact opposite of them.

Do they use a lot of black in their imaging? Use white in yours. Do they sponsor motocross events? Sponsor a snowboarding event. Are they all about the numbers? Be all about the people.

Not only will you get noticed for being you, but you’ll appear in front of a whole new set of eyes.

And we’ve got a lot more marketing ideas where that came from!

That’s not to say there aren’t plenty of formulas, tricks, trends, tendencies, working theories, analyses, etc.–there are lots!–but rather it’s important to remember that nobody actually knows for sure. They’re making educated guesses, which isn’t bad; it’s the best way to approach a situation like this.

It’s like predicting the weather. The meteorologist doesn’t actually know whether it’s going to rain or not, but they use the information that’s available to make their best guess.

Branding works the same way. You learn everything you can, and you make educated guesses about what approach will most likely provide the desired outcome. Sometimes it doesn’t work out, but that doesn’t mean you did it wrong; you took your shot, and sometimes you miss.

The basic rule, though, always holds: nobody knows anything about branding. (Just when you think you do, an exception pops up that reminds you that you don’t.)

Remembering that nobody knows anything about branding can actually help you in some very practical ways:

• You’ll stay flexible. If something’s just flat-out not working, you’ll be comfortable letting it go and trying something else.
• You’ll give yourself room for failure. Failure doesn’t have to be the end of a business. In fact, it should be a routine part of day-to-day operations. You’ll try things, and some of them won’t work. If you build it into your thinking and workflow, you can handle those incidents gracefully.
• You’ll make smarter business decisions. Bad data is more dangerous than no data at all. Believing something is surely going to work when there’s really a 15% chance it won’t can lead to some unfortunate business decisions. It’s okay not to know something; in fact, that’s often the healthiest perspective to have.

Lately, we’ve been creating a new content strategy to go along with our redesigned website and brand positioning. We want to make sure our blog posts, articles, social media posts, etc. align with our company goals and voice. We also want each person on our team to be involved in writing and sharing content since we all have different backgrounds and expertise. This presents a challenge since writing comes easy to some and intimidates others. To get our creative juices going, we created this super useful list of questions to reference when we’re grasping for creative content.

In this example, we’ll pretend that I want to write something about marketing plans, but I can’t figure out what to say. Here are some questions I might ask myself to spark inspiration:

1. What is your stance or belief about marketing plans? How should they be created, and how shouldn’t they be created?
2. What are some common misconceptions about marketing plans?
3. What’s an example of a marketing plan done properly? How about improperly? Why?
4. Where have you succeeded or failed with creating marketing plans, and why?
5. Can you draw parallels to a metaphor or something/someone in a completely unrelated field?
6. What are the basic steps to creating a marketing plan?
7. What tips would you have for someone working on a marketing plan?
8. Who’s the best in the world at creating marketing plans, and what do they believe about it?
9. How are marketing plans changing over time?
10. What’s something you can test or survey about marketing plans?
11. What do most people not know about marketing plans?
12. Why are marketing plans so important?
13. How can you learn more about marketing plans? What other resources can you direct people to?
14. What are the pros and cons about marketing plans?
15. How would you explain them to someone who knows nothing about marketing plans?
16. What separates the beginners from the experts?
17. What are some unanswered questions about marketing plans or questions that you’ve been wondering?
18. What are some statistics about marketing plans?
19. What are some great quotes about marketing plans?
20. What’s an amusing or interesting anecdote or story about marketing plans?

Next time you’re fresh out of ideas on what to write about or just trying to figure out how to articulate your thoughts, whip out this list and kick that writer’s block to the curb!

What are some other ways you spur creative writing or brainstorming?

However, the more you look at “Business 2.0,” the new generation of companies rising to power, you start to realize that they’re characterized by traditionally feminine characteristics: friendliness, relationships, consideration, humility, customer focus, situational decision-making, receptivity to feedback, thoughtfulness, quality of life, etc.

Things are certainly swinging back from the overly-masculine extreme at which they had been stuck for a long time. Feminine-minded businesses now have a strategic advantage, since they’re in the refreshing and desirable minority, while masculine-minded businesses are forgettably plentiful.

While you don’t have to be a man to run a masculine business or a woman to run a feminine business, perhaps it’s no coincidence that—according to a study by Guardian Life—women entrepreneurs are going to create more than half of new small business jobs by 2018.

Guys, it’s time to put down The Art of War. Business is changing.

Not only do you help to promote your already loyal fans, but you get to toot your horn a little bit as well. Any chance you have to talk about others is looked on as a friendly gesture, especially if you can do it in a way that indirectly promotes your own company.

These stories can take the form of traditional case studies, but other creative ways to discuss them are highly encouraged, especially if it’s delivered within a form of communication not directly associated with your company.

(By the way, we have lots of other marketing ideas for you to check out.)

They have functionality and audiences built in that would take you a long time and a lot of money to build from scratch. Save your cash and invest in areas where you can hit the ground running.

(Want more marketing ideas?)

It’s safe. It’s predictable. It’s simple. It’s easy to show your boss. It’s easy to show the client. It makes everyone look and feel good.

And it’s wrong.

The industry currently treats metrics-driven marketing as if it’s the inevitable way of the future, and that’s actually pretty sad. What I’m about to say challenges some deeply-held assumptions in the marketing and advertising industry, and I’m anticipating some passionate arguments against it.

Metrics-driven marketing is a gross over-simplification of sentiment and behavior.

“Marketing by numbers” can give you incremental improvements, but it generally can’t revolutionize a market, give you a radical edge over competitors, or generate an evangelizing fanbase.

Humans are complex, and groups of humans are exponentially more complex. However, agencies continue to promote (and their clients continue to be seduced by) the myth that a market’s sentiment and behavior can be accurately reduced to numbers in a spreadsheet.

Data is useful. It’s a piece of the puzzle. But it’s not enough to make good marketing decisions.

Client and agency metric-lust is understandable, of course. When you’re dealing with something as intricate and unpredictable as marketing, the notion of reducing it to a number is immensely appealing. But the data doesn’t accurately represent reality, and there are a lot of businesses making a lot of bad decisions as a result.

Marketing is one of the most complex of all human endeavors.

Marketing comprises hundreds of different disciplines — psychology, sociology, literature, anthropology, linguistics, art, etc. — all operating simultaneously and influencing each other in complicated ways.

We’ve been trying to solve the problem of moving people to action for millennia. (Aristotle’s principles for persuading groups can be found in the Rhetoric, for example, which dates from the 4th century BC.) And I’ll let you in on a secret: as an industry, we’re not even close to having it figured out.

We have some broad ideas, and there are some people with impeccable instincts for the work. But generally speaking, nobody really knows how it all works — and they certainly haven’t boiled it down to accurate numbers yet.

I genuinely wish we had a number that told us how well we’re doing. Our clients would love to match a branding strategy directly to an increase in profits. In most cases, though, it’s just not possible to accurately reduce the sum of the effects to an easy-to-handle number. Even revenue can be a poor indicator of marketing effectiveness, because it doesn’t account for long-term effects. (Brand-building won’t show you major results for months or even years.)

Good marketing can be measured. GREAT marketing often can’t.

Think about yourself for a moment. Think about the way things influence you. Think about the brands you truly love and the brands that influence your behavior.

Are you so predictable and reactionary that an Account Executive somewhere can plug you into a spreadsheet as “proof” their campaign worked? Or are your decisions (and the way you act on them) more complicated than that?

Let’s say you bought an iPhone yesterday. Apple, a company with a long-term marketing perspective, is insightful enough not to attribute that action to, say, a single ad campaign. They understand your feelings about the iPhone now are the sum of years of cultural and marketing influences, not a direct reaction to the commercial you saw last night.

Marketing by numbers will buy you some success. It’s great for simplistic and short-term results, and playing those numbers can generate a bit more revenue over time. But you won’t ignite the public’s imagination using a metrics-driven marketing approach, because you’ll ignore all of those cumulative effects essential to turning a brand into a cultural institution.

Perceived credibility is seductive, even when we know it’s a lie.

You already know numbers are deceptive. You’ve heard the quote about “lies, damned lies, and statistics.” You know how easy it is to twist study results to fit a conclusion. You roll your eyes at the idea of “2.5 children.”

Yet when confronted with a situation as intense (because money is involved) and complicated (because people are involved) as marketing, we all tend to fall back to the spreadsheets for comfort.

Why? Because we hate uncertainty. If you spend $30,000 on a new website, you want to know it’s working, so you look for numbers that tell you something significant: hits, conversions, goal funnels, heatmaps, etc.

Don’t get me wrong, those are important numbers to look at — as long as you don’t confuse them with reality. You should measure everything possible, but you should also take those measurements for what they are: imperfect and partial views of a complex situation.

The real danger is when you begin to treat those numbers as if they’re reality, and you turn your attention to making numbers go up or down instead of focusing on genuinely making a name for your business.

Numbers turn marketing into a video game (and that’s a bad thing).

Agencies love it when clients succumb to metric-lust, because it makes their jobs a lot easier. No longer do they have to seed a revolution, reform a society, or plant an ideavirus. They can simply make numbers go up and down, which is relatively easy.

Video games appeal for the same reason. If you play Call of Duty, you don’t have to worry about the infinite number of variables found in genuine warfare: danger, guilt, ambiguity, politics, culture, relationships, regret, intelligence, fear, etc. All you have to do is put bullets in bad guys. At the end of the round, you’re assigned simple numbers informing you how well you did. It’s fun, but it doesn’t even approximate reality.

Anyone can play a numbers game. I can do something today that will make your marketing metrics go bonkers tomorrow, making me look awesome and making you feel awesome. It’s hard to shake that fantasy, but your business won’t actually budge in the long term, because I was just playing for the numbers — not for reality.

If your marketing feels clean, straightforward, and measurable, you should feel worried right about now. Are you really marketing, or are you just playing the marketing video game?

The only thing worse than no data is bad data.

Marketing metrics can give you glimpses, but they can’t give you the whole picture. Your “conversion funnel” may help you identify potential problems with customer experience flow, but it won’t tell you your embarrassing logo is making people lose faith in your company. There’s no number for that.
People measure what’s easy to measure, but that number is seldom what’s most central to building a brand and reputation in a market.

You may feel “some data is better than no data,” but that’s actually incorrect in many situations. Sometimes understanding you don’t have significant data (while it’s a disconcerting feeling) is essential to making an appropriate strategic decision.

Sometimes “I don’t know” is the right answer, and you need to move forward with uncertainty.

People feel before they think.

Neuroscientists have demonstrated repeatedly that emotion and associations come before rational thought, dramatically influencing the conclusions people make.

A study published in 2004 found that, in a blind taste test, half the subjects asked choose Pepsi over Coke. However, when subjects were told what brands they were drinking, their brain activity significantly changed (with increased activity in the areas related to cognition and memory), and 75% reported that Coke tasted better.

Their tastes actually changed because of the associations they had with the brands. That’s powerful marketing, and that’s something spreadsheets won’t tell you how to do.

Emotions are the priority in first-world countries.

You’re probably familiar with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. At the bottom of the pyramid are the essentials (survival and safety), with which people are least likely to be swayed by emotion. If you’re struggling to meet those needs, you’ll be in a very practical and rational mindset.

However, most of your customers probably don’t fall into that group. They’ve probably moved on to the higher levels of the hierarchy:

• Love & belonging: friendship, family, sexuality, affiliation, brand tribes, etc.
• Esteem: self-confidence, achievement, respect of others, etc.
• Self-actualization: purpose, creativity, meaning, authenticity, vitality, etc.

In other words, our higher needs are affiliation, aspiration, and identity.

To build a brand that grows, thrives, and endures, you need to tap into the top tiers of this hierarchy of needs. That’s what people are craving, and their driving purpose is to satisfy those needs. If you’re focused entirely on incremental modifications to drive numbers up, you’re missing massive opportunities to turn your brand into a vehicle that fulfills those needs.

Humans understand humans best.

The great under-appreciated fact of marketing is the human brain is wired to understand human sentiment and behavior. It does a really good job at it. Some of the greatest design and marketing work of all time has been done in the face of numbers that didn’t seem to make sense, because someone knew it would work and trusted their instincts.

For example, when Don Chadwick and Bill Stumpf from Herman Miller designed the Aeron chair, they did essentially the opposite of what the metrics told them. When the market metrics demonstrated a demand for soft, attractive, and elegant chairs, they built a hard, ugly, and confusing one — and it became one of the most coveted chairs in history.

Human instinct isn’t always right, but it’s right way more often than we give it credit for. The brain can process massive amounts of information and extrapolate subtle (and sometimes surprising) conclusions that can form the basis of a marketing strategy.

Compared to the marketing-by-numbers approach (which is about as realistic as a video game), the well-informed instincts of a design/marketing/advertising professional can produce remarkably innovative and effective campaigns that leapfrog over competitors. Metrics should be part of the information gathered, but should never be the focus and foundation of the campaign itself.

Get human, and think past the numbers.

The need to look beyond metrics isn’t just touchy-feeling and creative gibberish. Human behavior is based primarily on feelings and emotions, and only secondarily on logic and analysis. Failing to account for that in your marketing strategy (or believing you can reduce it to numbers) puts you at risk of spending large amounts of money on something with very little basis in reality.

It’s a tough sell, of course. It’s hard to throw away the metrics crutch and stand on your own two feet, trusting your gut over the spreadsheet. But that’s where the truly market-changing results can be found, and where you can build a client base that truly loves and connects with your brand.

Effective brand metaphors are crafted based on specific, relevant attributes of the brand. It can’t just be clever and interesting; it has to be specific, or it’ll only serve to further confuse consumers about what the brand is all about.

False or irrelevant messaging is unsustainable. Those who take this approach can coast for a while and may even see some success before it unravels. Inevitably, though, the slow attrition of disillusioned customers takes its toll. The long-term loss isn’t worth the short-term gain.

So, any brand metaphor process must include an initial step of thoroughly identifying the key characteristics of the brand that should be communicated through the brand metaphor. Without this crucial step, the resulting brand may be distinctive among its competitors, but it would ultimately fail due to irrelevance.

In a business context, most people are simply looking for information about what works, what’s going to help them succeed, etc. They’re fascinated by people with answers. These posts also serve a positioning purpose, helping people understand how you view your craft differently than your competitors.

These can take a variety of forms, but the easiest one is simply to explain your belief in a single sentence, and make that the title. In the body of the post, explain it a bit more, provide some examples, etc. Or if you want to go big, gather several related beliefs together and explain them together in list format (a sort of low-key manifesto).

If you’re struggling to come up with topics to write about for your business blog, marketing materials, etc., simply start with this question: ”What do you really believe?”

The basic notion behind brand archetypes is that brands are a basic human social concept, and that the same patterns and ideas tend to repeat themselves over time, such that what we now consider “brands” are roughly equivalent to archetypal characters in literature, religion, folklore, mythology, etc. They’re a way for us to understand ourselves and affiliate with others, and by associating them with those common themes and characters, we can better understand how consumers connect with brands.

We’ve done archetype-based branding exercises with a number of clients based on the Pearson system, and each time there’s been a sense of revelation and excitement about their new understanding of the relationship between their brand and its consumers.

But then it started to suck…

As we continued to use the Pearson system, we came up against certain obstacles. We found some archetypes to be overly general, and thought they should be split up. We found other archetypes that seemed like they were superfluous and should be combined with others. Sometimes we’d be frustrated that the archetype should have been finding didn’t actually exist (according to Pearson’s breakdown).

In short, the 12 Pearson Archetypes weren’t working well for us.

We struggled with this concept for a while. The Pearson system was relatively well established, and used by many other branding agencies, so it seemed to have that in its favor. On the other hand, it was tempting to either switch to another system or start over entirely to get away from some of the concerns that had been nagging us with each project.

Finding new archetypes

Finally we decided: rather than just tweak a system that (for us at least) was broken, the best way to come up with the right system for Forty was to do it from scratch. We had a solid understanding of the conceptual foundation of archetypal branding, and had confidence that we could do this on our own, regardless of what system anyone else was using.

Our first step was to gather raw archetypes from as many sources as we could. We begin reviewing a variety of fields, including literature, religion, mythology, folklore, video games, movies, comics, cartoons, contemporary fiction, role-playing games, etc. We came up with hundreds of common character archetypes that together formed a reasonable cross-section of the universal characters in human culture. (Please note that this was a non-scientific process, so don’t base your doctoral thesis on it or anything.)

Then, we started performing clustering exercises, asking participants to combine these characters into groups to help us determine where the overlaps occurred. Every participant had a different take on it, but in aggregate we were able to find correlation patterns between individual characters that enabled us to isolate the universal archetypes.

The 20 universal brand archetypes

When we spread out the data in the conference room and began the process of isolating universal archetypes, the data seemed to jump off the page. We spent some time trying to figure out how best to identify each archetype with a name that would make sense, but the actual isolation process went pretty quickly.

Based on our own research and process–your mileage may vary–we came up with a set of 20 universal brand archetypes that we feel very comfortable with.

Here they are, with some rough additional explanations:

MAVERICK (Rebel, Outlaw, Rogue)

• Brands: Harley Davidson, Virgin, MTV, Rimmel, Steve Madden, Urban Outfitters, Orbit
• People: Henry David Thoreau, Sid Vicious, George Washington
• Goal/method: To achieve freedom from the establishment through defiance, disobedience, and nonconformity.

EVERYMAN (Good Old Boy, Girl Next Door, Average Joe)

• Brands: Miller High Life, Sonic, Walmart, Lowe’s, Walgreens, Southwest, Visa, Covergirl, Hollister
• People: Jack Black, Homer Simpson, Tom Hanks, Princess Diana
• Goal/method: To bond with others by being humble, hard-working, and friendly

INNOCENT (Saint, Goody-Two-Shoes, Angel)

• Brands: IKEA, Google, Apple, Dove, Lysol, Master Card, Aveda
• People: Mr. Rogers, Gandhi, Boy Scouts, Oprah
• Goal/method: To achieve a simple, pure life by always doing the right thing

ENTERTAINER (Clown, Jester, Performer)

• Brands: Budweiser, Fanta, Jack in the Box, Hulu, Woot.com, Taco Bell, Doritos
• People: Robin Williams, Bob Hope, Jeff Foxworthy
• Goal/method: To make friends (and avoid making enemies) through humor and fun

VILLAIN (Bad Guy, Monster, Vampire)

• Brands: Megadeth, Hot Topic, LA Ink
• People: Marilyn Manson, Darth Vader, Dr. Horrible
• Goal/method: To satisfy internal drives or passions through whatever means necessary

INTELLECTUAL (Sage, Genius, Expert)

• Brands: Ask.com, CNN, Gallup, MIT, Harvard, CIA, Bloomberg
• People: Stephen Hawking, Marie Curie, Ken Jennings
• Goal/method: To find the truth through research, objectivity, and diligence

SENSUALIST (Hedonist, Pleasure Seeker)

• Brands: Victoria’s Secret, BMW, Godiva, Versace, Food Network, Nivea, Sephora
• People: Madonna, Paula Deen, Dracula
• Goal/method: To pursue perfect enjoyment through physical experiences

SERVANT (Martyr, Slave, Monk)

• Brands: Red Cross, Amnesty International, Peace Corps, Humane Society, Police Department
• People: Mother Theresa, Pat Tillman
• Goal/method: To lose yourself through service to others

TRADITIONALIST (Conservative, Old School, Miser)

• Brands: Old Spice, Wendy’s, Procter & Gamble, Wells Fargo, Folger’s, GAP
• People: Norman Rockwell, Ronald Reagan
• Goal/method: To restore the world through a return to old-fashioned values

NURTURER (Mom, Mother Earth, Healer)

• Brands: Campbell’s, Pampers, Volvo, Johnson & Johnson, Loreal, Allstate
• People: June Cleaver, Paula Deen
• Goal/method: To help others feel loved by providing for their needs and wants

CONNECTOR (Networker, Politician, Talker)

• Brands: AT&T, Verizon, Facebook, Linkedin
• People: Oprah, Donald Trump
• Goal/method: To make things happen by knowing the right people

ARTIST (Creative, Creator, Craftsman)

• Brands: HP, Adobe, Lego, Home Depot, Michael’s, Black and Decker, HGTV
• People: Beethoven, Salvador Dali, William Shakespeare, Bob Villa
• Goal/method: To create something of enduring beauty and value

PHILOSOPHER (Sage, Prophet, Guru)

• Brands: Scientology, Calvin Klein, Nikon
• People: Plato, Deepak Chopra, Paulo Coelho
• Goal/method: To help people understand the world by seeing things from a different perspective.

DREAMER (Magician, Sorcerer, Wizard)

• Brands: Disney, Axe, Rock Band
• People: Tim Burton, Carlos Castaneda, Steven Spielberg, Harry Potter
• Goal/method: To help people achieve supernatural experiences by promoting faith and wonder (transformation).

MOTIVATOR (Mentor, Preacher, Promoter)

• Brands: Truth, (RED), Electronic Frontier Foundation, MoveOn.org
• People: Tony Robbins, Barack Obama, Richard Simmons
• Goal/method: To achieve amazing goals by getting people excited about a cause

RULER (King, Leader, Father)

• Brands: Microsoft, Rolex, Gillette, The New York Times, Jack Daniel’s
• People: Steve Jobs, Franklin Roosevelt, Moses
• Goal/method: To lead people to a common destination through confidence, determination, and influence

EXPLORER (Seeker, Wanderer)

• Brands: North Face, Pier One, Jeep, Greyhound, Subaru, Starbucks
• People: Christopher Columbus, Jacques Cousteau, Steve Irwin
• Goal/method: To learn what’s constant in life by always changing your environment

DEFENDER (Knight, Superhero, Warrior)

• Brands: U.S. Army, Greenpeace, Marlboro, Dial, Band-Aid
• People: Batman, George S. Patton, John Wayne
• Goal/method: To protect others from harm through bravery and service

THRILL-SEEKER (Gambler, Swashbuckler, Adventurer)

• Brands: X Games, Mountain Dew, Chrysler Crossfire, Carnival Cruise Ships, New Zealand, Camelback
• People: Richard Branson, Ben Saunders, Errol Flynn
• Goal/method: To achieve great rewards through great risks

ACHIEVER (Athlete, Hot Shot, Strongman)

• Brands: Nike, Ford, Home Depot, Adidas, Under Armor
• People: Lance Armstrong, Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods
• Goal/method: To prove yourself through amazing physical acts

There’s more coming soon….

These are still very rough, and we’re working on sorting out many of the subtleties, but we wanted to at least get the information out there in case anyone else finds it useful or interesting. We’ll be continuing to explore this concept, so be sure to register for updates at Brand Metaphors to be notified when we’ve got some juicy new information available.

For example, “Brown Family Medicine is a world-class brain surgeon” is an ineffective brand metaphor because family medicine and brain surgery are too close together. Instead of associating the positive attributes of a brain surgeon to the practice, a parent might simply wonder if they’ve brought their sick child to the wrong place.

However, a brand metaphor like “Brown Family Medicine is the 1927 Yankees” could work well because any visual, written, or sensory elements derived from that brand metaphor would be taken figuratively. No patient would ever mistakenly assume the practice is actually the 1927 Yankees baseball team.

The similarities between the source in the target should generally be experiential or emotional in nature, rather than objective and practical. This reduces the amount of cognitive dissonance felt by consumers, and allows them to simply enjoy the experience and benefit from a consistently presented message.

We want to help, so we’ve put together a workbook of 40 creative marketing ideas for you, with plenty of room for your own notes!

You might not even use the exact ideas, but they’re sure to get your gears turning. Download the workbook, do the homework, and you’ll have dozens (if not hundreds!) of creative marketing ideas you can start working on right away.

Download the 40 Creative Marketing Ideas workbook (PDF, 446KB)

We’d love to get your feedback. Let us know what you think!

Dark Cliff wanted their logo to be immediately evocative and make people ask questions. They also wanted to combat the ghost hunter cliches by portraying a legitimate, academic, and credible image. Many ghost hunters and supernatural experts are generic mom-and-pop shops that all look and sound the same. On the other hand, Dark Cliff is not the typical paranormal investigator. They’re more focused on debunking suspicious activities and clues rather than jumping to conclusions and chasing apparitions. They exhaust all other options first and then investigate the paranormal possibilities.

To get to the heart of Dark Cliff’s approach and capture their story in the logo, we started off by developing a brand metaphor. We brainstormed other things that debunk mysteries and evoke the same feelings, and we determined their metaphor is a CIA video game. Many video games are all about quests to overcome challenges, save the day, and reveal secrets. The CIA has similar missions, and, although they’re elusive, they must have a certain level of structure and legitimacy since they’re part of the government.

This metaphor gave us a rich starting point for Dark Cliff’s logo. We focused more heavily on the CIA portion of the metaphor for the logo design and did some research on cryptanalysis (code breaking) for additional inspiration. We found out you often need various types of keys to be aligned in order to break sophisticated codes. We thought this could be an interesting concept for the logo.

The final design included two keys moving towards alignment and a variation of the morse code for “D” and “C”.

Dark Cliff loved how the logo turned out and is in the process of integrating it into their materials, apparel, and more.