Brand Central Station

It’s a bit ironic that I would be writing about the values of transparency and candor and their importance to the brand that is America during a presidential election campaign. In fact, I can’t think of a more appropriate time to demonstrate my point, albeit by contrast.

We start this entry with a brief history lesson and then a point or two.

Creativity and the First Amendment

Making a new fangled democracy from scratch isn’t easy. In fact, the Founding Fathers of the new union of American States found quite a few issues they couldn’t settle through negotiation (slavery being one). But once the Constitution was completed, there was one thing everyone could agree on … the Constitution wouldn’t pass.

The document had done a good job of covering detailed administrative and operational issues. Bureaucrats love procedure and process – and they haven’t changed much over the past two hundred years.

The difference this time around, however, is that there were a number of founders – most notably Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and a few others, who found significant holes in the constitutional document. These two commentators – each one from a different point of view on the role and importance of government – were able to provide an objective review of the document and joined the chorus of voices expressing concern for the protection of personal liberties.

The original Bill of Rights – those first ten amendments to the US Constitution – provide some of the most important protections to individuals in America. These limits on government were unique to mankind when they were introduced and are some of the most eloquent and elegant statements on personal freedoms in existence today. They reflected concerns of citizens at the time they were written and, for the most part, still accurately reflect the concerns and expectations of citizens today.

It’s no coincidence then that the freedom of speech has played such a significant role in defining the American brand worldwide over the past two hundred-plus years. Americans have, for the most part, rewarded brands, institutions and people who say what’s on their mind. Conversely, American consumers have demonstrated time and again their disdain for brands that lie to them.

Successful American icons are generally portrayed as “straight talking.” Whether those icons are cowboys, jazz, apple pie, high school football, John Wayne or Abe Lincoln – there is a natural love affair between things that are true to themselves and things considered to be “American.”

Honesty and candor are important to the pursuit of the American dream because true creativity can’t happen in a vacuum – or, worse still, in an environment of unkowns and lies. Creativity, the kind that can save people’s lives or change their environment to make it a better place, requires a clear understanding of the challenges that lie ahead.

Unfortunately, this expectation of candor and honesty can lead to some pretty ugly statements. When the President of the United States challenges terrorists to “Bring it on,” or that Osama bin Laden is “Wanted dead or alive,” Americans see a leader who is being honest with his feelings while others – especially those outside the USA – who see the ugly side of this honest streak emerge as bragadocio, or in the case of our current president, a “Texas swagger.”

The interesting thing to note here is that Americans don’t like it when they find out a brand is propped up with lies. This is true whether it’s a product, an institution, a celebrity or a politician. Enron. Michael Jackson. Even our current political leaders are getting pummeled for their inability to tell the truth or admit a mistake.

America is a noisy place.

One of the things many people who live outside the USA don’t seem to realize is how our First Amendment freedoms shape our media landscape.

Thanks to a Constitutionally-protected right to say whatever is on your mind, we have a culture that supports over 25,000 magazines, 40,000 newspapers and tens of thousands of broadcast and cable properties (television and radio). And while all of these media properties pick up and repeat the opinions and thoughts of Americans (and others), those messages are received differently inside America than they are on the outside.

Over two hundred years’ experience of deciphering this clutter has tempered Americans’ ability to listen and has made us very selective in how we filter information received through the media. This trait, alone, makes American media audiences different from others and it’s a fact we often forget.

And it’s a trait that most other foreign cultures don’t take into consideration when dealing with American customers or American brands.

(c) 2004 – Brand Central Station, all rights reserved. For more information on Brand Central Station, please visit our website.

Here’s a great, in-depth article on positioning. Sure, it’s long (for a blog) but it’s still a quicker read than Reis and Trout’s book (a recommended read for any entry-level marketing person whether they be advertising or public relations flavor).

Positioning: How To Own A Piece of Your Customer’s Mind: 101PublicRelations.com Public Relations Blog, PR, Publicity, Marketing

I’m not sure who should be more upset about this post … Mark Barnett, the godfather of the reality television format or Mark Cuban who is now getting the blame (albeit tounge-in-cheek) for causing the entertainment format to jump the shark.

The birth of POP! Public Relations

For the futurist in all of us, here’s a link to a series of articles on the latest technology you’ve probably not heard of … yet.

Seriously, if you wanna get up-to-speed on what you need to know in another ten years, this is a good place to start.

So You Say You Want a Revolution :: AO

Just like with more traditional media, the online media world has its own set of tricks to make the bucks go farther and work a little harder. Here’s a valid advertising suggestion from a PR guy … go figure.

PR Communications: Deleting Google Adwords for Less Profit

If there were one core value I would associate with the American brand, it would be creativity.

In my marketing practice, I usually look for a historical root to each brand value we try to use with a client. That practice works in the case of Brand America as well – and especially in the case of creativity as an essential American value.

Creativity’s roots in American history

If you look at the coincidence of the birth of the Renaissance and the discovery of the New World, you find there is much less luck involved in the timing than you might originally guess. In fact, the discovery of the New World and its further development by primarily Western Christian cultures was, I believe, an inevitability given the geography and cultural growth occurring at the time.

As man was starting to re-discover lost knowledge about himself and the world around him, it was natural (and that word is key) to continue exploring – whether that be to satisfy one’s own innate curiosity or for the glory of some higher power (a ruler or deity in most cases). In fact, exploration carried with it several rewards, some social and some economic.

So it’s appropriate that on Columbus Day (today) we view the discovery of the New World as the first step towards American independence and the creation of a unique American brand.

It was with the discovery of the new world that people realized there was a far off place that was relatively unspoiled. The human mind – especially the Western mind – has a way of taking ownership of such an imagined place and building expectations into it. As a result, the New World became a place of hope and dreams. A place where the questioning could find answers whether in the form of religious freedoms, riches, commodities or land.

What these original immigrants found when they landed here was a country full of opportunity and, more importantly, peril. It was very easy to get yourself killed over here. Whether the indigenous people were friendly or not, one wrong move could send you over a cliff or into uncharted woodlands for ever.

The dance between danger and hope in America began here. The result was a unique kind of creativity born out of necessity and a blending of cultures, traditions and knowledge unburdened by conventional moral and social rules. People had to get along and had to work together or they would die.

It was that easy.

Within two hundred years, American philosophers and scientists (most notably Ben Franklin) started to lead the way in discovery and “enlightened” thinking. Why such leadership from such a small and distant country? After all, Americans were considered rude, backwoods huckleberries – especially by the British. Yet many of the American “Founding Fathers” were well educated in a variety of cultural backgrounds both by formal training and by virtue of exposure to so many cultures both native and foreign.

This blending of cultures combined with geographic size, relative isolation and virtually inexhaustible resources to create a prime environment for something new to evolve. The essential ingredient required to form the American culture, however, was creativity.

The more you read and understand this point in history, the more amazing it is that so many people came to a similar conclusion at approximately the same time. The essential elements of a creative environment – whether it’s found in an advertising agency’s creative department or a research and development lab – were brought to play in Philadelphia during the various Congresses of the 1770′s and 80′s.

Constitutional compromises were reached that broke new ground in how people would be governed. Faith and reason were untangled in the name of government and religious freedom for the first time in over a millennia. And innovations like paper money, free press and other conventions we consider as a part of our everyday life were created out of necessity.

Creativity has been – and continues to be – an essential part of the American psyche. It’s a core value of what distinguishes American things as being uniquely American. Such a value comes with several inherent risks (after all, people are naturally resistant to change), but the upside potential is what most Americans see when it comes to innovation and “all things new.”

Understanding the role of creativity in the birth and on-going development of America is essential in understanding what our brand means to people in our country and around the world.

(c) 2004 – Brand Central Station, all rights reserved. For more information on Brand Central Station, please visit our website.

I was in Las Vegas last week on a vacation with my wife.

I say that not to brag but just as a point of reference. You see, we were sitting at breakfast minding my own business when I couldn’t help but overhear the three businessmen sitting next to me chattering away. One was an owner or manager (I’m not sure which) for a company that manufactures sunglasses. He was being sold to by two guys representing a plastics coating company.

There they were, sitting at a breakfast table in a restaurant in a resort, talking business – and it dawned on me: “There’s a reason why these guys are sitting here among the palm trees and gourmet coffee talking business rather than back at the office with the Styrofoam cups and generic blend.”

It may seem obvious, but if you want to make a customer feel special, you treat them a certain way. Duh. We’ve all done that, whether it’s a steak dinner or a round of golf at a nice course. But why?

Because most of us have a set of common reference points as to what is nice and what is tacky – set, in large part, by the opinion leaders in the media. Madison Avenue (meaning the ad industry) has helped lead this image-making process for years. And whether we like to admit it or not, it has an effect on even the hard-working B2B marketing sector which normally eschews glitz and glamour and all-things consumer-related for pictures of machinery, bulleted copy and headlines that often make unsubstantiated claims of “excellence” or “quality.”

In a hamburger or luxury car, we might intuitively know what makes one “quality” and the other “not-so-quality” – but in a metal press, elevator, drain cleaner or commodity, that standard starts to get a little more difficult to define. Especially in bullet points.

So, what’s the point?

The point is that even if your ads, website and collateral material is as good – or better – than your direct competition, that’s not the only group of images (or brands) you’re competing with. We all have a consumer-oriented quality standard that has to be met in order for our claims to be considered reliable and reasonable.

Ask yourself if your business is presenting itself in a way that would stack up respectably against leading brands like Pepsi, Nike or Cadillac. For some folks who deal in both B2B and consumer arenas (John Deere comes to mind), the decision is obvious.

So what are some simple – and relatively cost-effective – things your business can do to make sure it presents a competitive image?

1) Make sure your visuals are high quality. This means you should make sure your pictures are in focus and color correct. Hiring a professional photographer who understands how to use light can make a significant difference, but even if you end up taking your pictures yourself that doesn’t mean you should be satisfied with blurry or under-exposed images to tell your story.

2) Tell your story in complete sentences and save the bullets for the reinforcements. In fact, when we write B2B copy, we start with the bulleted points (after all, those should be the most important, right?) and then write the copy from there. But when we put together the layout of a brochure or ad, we lead with the complete sentances and save the bulleted points to use as either graphics inside an article or for the end in a specifications section.

3) Don’t mess around with your logo. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen companies change their logo color to match their ad, squeeze their logo into a corner or stretch their logo to fill some space. Arggggh! If you’re that careless with your logo, what do you think a prospective customer thinks you might do with his order? Be consistent!

4) Always include your contact information – even if it’s just an e-mail address. As a B2B marketer, you have a distinct disadvantage versus larger consumer brands … your customer might not know where to find you. So you have to tell him. At the very least, you need to include an e-mail address but real life addresses; phone numbers and website addresses are always preferred in addition to the e-mail. And one other thing about that web and e-mail address – make sure it’s not a generic one (e.g. aol.com, hotmail.com, etc.) – you’ve got to appear serious and there isn’t much of an excuse anymore for not having your own domain name.

5) Keep your website information up-to-date. Nothing says “We don’t care about our business or yours” faster than completely out of date information on the company website. If you have a press section, make sure you have something on there that is no more than four weeks old. And, by all means, make sure your copyright notice is current in the footer of your website. I remember calling a company once who had an old copyright notice in the footer. I asked to speak to the president about updating his website and was told he had passed away … six months earlier. D’oah.

6) If you use on-hold messaging or music, make sure it’s relevant to the season. Ever go on hold and hear a promotion that’s already passed its deadline or suffer through Christmas music in June? It’s happened to me. Lapses like this tell customers you’re behind the times.

It’s just a half-dozen suggestions, but if you follow them, you’ll be able to hold your own against your competition.

Good luck.

(c)2004, Brand Central Station – all rights reserved. To learn more about BCS, please visit our website.

In the world of marketing, there is an almost obsessive focus on “traditional” advertising – television, magazines, newspapers, radio and outdoor. But highly targeted media, specifically online media, is getting more and more press.

That’s why it’s interesting to see a usually unconsidered media, like junk faxes, break through in a news story that, I think, has implications for other medias down the road.

Fax.com (who’s website no longer works, by the way), was fined over $5 million for auto-dialing phone numbers throughout California in an attempt to identify which numbers were answered by fax machines. By accepting the fine, Fax.com agreed to stop its auto-calling operations and is now facing a larger civil penalty when the State of California takes action against them.

Of course, all of that gets in line behind Jankfax.org’s $2.2 trillion dollar lawsuit which is still pending.

In fact, Junkfax.org has provided quite a bit of information about junk faxing – a technique that annoys businesses and consumers alike. And now, those of us on the receiving end have started to fight back. Junkfax’s case status report provides a run-down of a few cases along with horror stories, news stories and even instructions on how to sue faxers.

So is sending unsolicited faxes worth the risk? Apparently. As a marketing strategy, these companies seem to have a relatively high rate of success when compared to other “annoyance marketing” tactics like e-mail spam, boiler room calls, etc.

And even though the federal government is working on revised/more stringent legislation, it appears tougher reform is still a year or so away.

It’s interesting to note that the fax marketing companies we looked into, like FaxAd Express don’t even mention possible privacy concerns, lawsuits or legislative issues related to their profession. Instead the focus on the “bells and whistles” of their technology and hide behind third party service providers, a Las Vegas business location and a dodgy legal disclaimer.

All this smells bad to us to. And the implications for other, more conventional, forms of media are what concern us. After all, if this were to go to the extreme and every commercial communications relationship required some kind of “opt-in” before it could take place, how would you ever break the ice? (Then again, maybe that’s the next great business opportunity.)

The way it’s worked out, telemarketers, e-mail spammers and companies like Fax.com are like the kids in the back of the school bus who won’t sit down and so the rest of us have to suffer the consequences. Their persistent disregard of personal space and invasive haranguing is enough to raise the ire of the one group who can really do something about all of this – voters.

Yeah, not politicians. Voters.

You see, when the voters get annoyed, they take it out on the politicians and it doesn’t matter how much special interest money is involved. If passing a law that only hurts a faceless company is all it takes to get the voters off your back, there isn’t a politician on Earth who will be kept off the bill.

The problem, of course, is that special interests are starting to see how this all works and have co-opted voter angst and rage in an attempt to get their special legislation across. And what are they using to do it?

Unsolicited e-mail, telemarketing calls disguised as political opinion surveys and, I would assume, broadcast fax messages sent to whoever they think can make a difference.

Ironic, isn’t it? Thanks to ill-informed political marketing and media consultants (most of whom don’t have a commercial credential that’s worth a damn), politicians have become the next “niche annoyance” marketer. They could learn a thing or two if they thought about how their actions speak louder than their sound bites.

Later.

DMNews.com | News | Article

With the elections just under a month away, it seems appropriate to include a political article every now and then.

Brand Autopsy: Dissecting the Presidential Logos

A little advertising wisdom from Timothy Miles, an advertising pro from an Australian agency named “Wizard of Ads.” Hey, I’m a sucker for any article that includes some Greek mythology in its lead.

In truth though, this article is well worth the read for no other reason than it attempts to address the problem most of us have run into when working with account executives who are “suits” or who have tried to manage long-term client relationships and have struggled to keep them fresh.

Making Ads Work: A Herculean Task? Nope. Worse.

John Jantsch’s concise post on the importance of selling your internal support team warrants a quick look. For those of you that work with internal teams – especially inter-disciplinary ones – this article would be great for a weekly staff get together or team lunch.

More Duct Tape Marketing

The guys at Marketing Playbook have found an interesting little article on new trends in cellular phones as phones and cellular programs designed specifically for children have been launched in both China and Korea.

Marketing Playbook: More Phone Targeting: Kids/Grandparents