Alberta Business Marketing

Kev (my business partner) and I were chatting about the influence of design in marketing. He has great insights into design intelligence. Like most great insights, it's stuff that is floating in the back ground of our minds but too often we don't let it come to the forefront and really impact our work. He sees design intelligence for marketing as one of the most critical components for impacting and motivating choice. But too often marketing teams don't use design intelligence. Some designs are totally consumed by layout. That's the technical skill behind great design: white space, typography, use of colour, clean lines, careful attention to grids. While great layout makes the piece pretty -- it's doesn't push the edges towards brand personality, marketing principals and offer insight.

On the other extreme are the marketing teams who sacrifice design intelligence for fine art. Fine art is focused on the visual experience -- not the message. The message is often subtle or determined by the viewer. It belongs on living room walls and museums. Great marketing motivates and inspires action. Design intelligence starts with understanding the overall goal, the underlying challenge, the audience, human motivations and, maybe most of all, takes the designer out of the picture. As we were chatting, we were musing about a piece that we did for a client many years ago. Both of us hated it. While the offer was intact and the design intelligence was strong in understanding the overall brand and the motivations of the direct audience -- our visual minds were really turned off. It was the second highest performing acquisition piece that year. That taught us a lesson.

Our overall goal was to communicate to the audience. Frankly, neither of us were the audience. While neither Kev or I would be motivated by this piece -- we were not the people the client wanted to motivated. The biggest mistake marketers make is to allow our own preferences to interfere with truly understanding the audience. One more story.... when my son was about 2 years old my husband and I worked in a kid's program. One of the features of the program was a dorky beanie that had a helicopter blade on the top. On the way home I was nattering about the lack of sophistication of the premium when Chris piped up from his car seat: "I can hardly wait until I can get one of those hats!" The designer of the program was bang on in assessing the level of sophistication of the audience. Design intelligence refuses to be tainted by personal taste. It is objective, rational and results oriented.

Barefoot Creative is looking for a designer as I write. Without a question we are looking for a designer with design intelligence!

Gayle Goossen

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The Man In The Chair was voted the best business ad of the decade (1950’s, that is) by Business Week Magazine and the best (#1) business ad of the entire 20th Century by B2B Magazine and Crain Communications.

The Man In The Chair is iconic – and even beat Intel which was voted the second best ad campaign of the last century.

This ad was sponsored by McGraw-Hill Magazine Division and is a classic from that era – featuring a very stern-looking executive sitting in his chair with both feet planted firmly on the ground, a scowl on his face, hands folded together in front of him with elbows resting on the armrest.

Leaning slightly forward he says: “I don’t know your company...I don’t know your company’s product...I don’t know what your company stands for...I don’t know your customers...I don’t know your company’s reputation. NOW – what was it you wanted to tell me?” Across the bottom is the simple selling proposition: sales start before your salesman calls – with business publication advertising. The great David Ogilvy considered this to be “the single best definition of advertising ever given”.

The origins of The Man In The Chair – the ad originated with Fuller, Smith and Ross advertising. It was written by a 31-year-old copywriter. A professional model was hired for the job but an account supervisor (Gil Morris) sat for a Polaroid shot (a rehearsal) – but his grouchy look was sufficiently stern that he wound up being used in the final shot.

The Man In The Chair re-visited – McGraw-Hill has made several attempts to update its iconic ad: in one version an Asian was used to reflect changes in business customers and the general population. But these tweaks were not enough for a B2B conference organizers last year. A complete re-make of The Man In The Chair was acted and staged for conference participants – to portray how new media paired with technology could be incorporated into an updated version of this ad which can be found on Youtube:

• The re-make features a harried man (a prospect) running around and talking to a salesperson on his cell phone – while checking his email and looking at LinkedIn.

• He confirms he received the sales proposal but “don’t know who you are”.

• The prospective customer checks with his online community and reports: “I don’t know your company" – either. The website is thin; they have no presence on LinkedIn and a former employee is blogging (negatively) about the company.

• NEW environment; SAME message.

So why has The Man In The Chair been given so much prominence for over 50 years?

• Mainly because it offers an ageless and focussed message – landing worthwhile new business takes repeated and concerted efforts. (Research at Harvard University established that a prospect must see an advertising campaign nine (9) times to take them from apathy to purchasing readiness.)

• The basic message is still considered to be valid – 50+ years later and even in the electronic age.

Ruth Lukaweski

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To celebrate the life and work of Don Watt, heralded as a globally renowned marketer, advertiser and design icon – a special exhibit is taking place at the Ontario College of Art & Design in Toronto, Thursday April 22 – Sunday April 25, 2010.

Don Watt’s legendary career has been highlighted by numerous accolades including his inductions into the Private Label Hall of Fame and Canada’s Marketing Hall of Legends. Don was also recognized by the Harvard School of Business for business innovation and use of strategic design to effect change in consumer response.

Don's work with major retailers included developing brands and store designs that remain some of the world’s most recognizable. His portfolio includes the redesign of the Loblaw’s stores, No Name and President’s Choice; Wal-Mart Super Centres, Great Value and Sam’s Choice; Metro store designs and packaging; and Home Depot with its distinctive orange logo and innovative store concept. While working for Nestle, Don was the first designer to use photo-symbolism on packaging for their instant coffee. He also worked as a designer for A.V. Roe, working on the cockpit design for the Avro Arrow airplane, and worked on the design of the Canada Pavillion at Expo ‘67.

For those who would like to visit this exhibit - the exhibit hours are listed here. Admission is free.

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Many advertisers still believe in the cliché, if you tell more, you sell more. It seems these advertisers think as they are paying for ads, they have a right to mention everything about their brand; its features, benefits, sales offer, tagline, slogan and their dog's name. In doing so, advertisers forget the main purpose of the communication is to connect and convey the idea, not to overload the audience with information.

Gone are the days when you could sell more by telling more. Hard core push selling is being replaced with soft and pull-creating marketing and branding. We live in a cluttered world. You go to Chapters and will find hundreds of books on a topic. You Google a topic and get thousands of results. Though how many of these are relevant, is anybody's guess. People are not hungry for information. They are satiated and have become selective information-seekers. It is critical to understand that less is new more.

Try following seven proven steps for building an effective and successful communication model and you would be laughing all the way to the bank.

1. If you are in a selling business, you are primarily selling solutions. Solution to the needs and pain points of your target market. So find out what are the needs of your customers, select one or two needs that you can serve best and provide them with better solutions for these needs. The emphasis is on providing solutions that are BETTER than your competition.

2. Build your concept / communication around the solution you provide. Convey how your solution is better and how it serves the needs, whatever it may be, good-looking hair, a slim physique, a medical concern or pet grooming.

3. Set your communication objective.

4. Develop a sticky creative with a tagline, copy and include graphics (picture) to accentuate the creative into an aspiration, as a picture is better than thousand words. Remember, just one concept or offer per ad and leave plenty of white space.

5. Determine touch points for your target market. Implement an integrated media plan, that is, use more than one medium. If relevant, include digital and social media. These are cost-effective mediums and provide for excellent monitoring and measurement. Using more than one medium and leveraging online options is an efficient way to enhance Reach and get in-market synergy for increasing awareness.

6. Frequency is critical in getting heard and noticed. Opt for higher frequency. I believe if you have to select between number of mediums and frequency, reduce number of mediums to increase frequency. It pays to segment the market and become an active player in it.

7. Complete the loop by measuring market response, campaign results and the ROMI. Try incorporating built-in measuring tools. A communication initiative stays incomplete until you measure its effectiveness, learn from it and tweak the model for greater efficiency and effectiveness in future.

Fazal Siddiqi

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You have decided to build an online brand community and are now ready to get started. Before you begin developing a communication strategy and pulling the appropriate resources together, you will have to take a step back and evaluate what your company is ready for. In doing so, you will essentially save yourself some of the unnecessary headaches and aggravation that you would encounter if you were to skip the step altogether.

What is “social media”, “web 2.0”, “new media” and what is the ROI?

These are the questions that many in your organization may and will be asking. To present a comprehensive community development strategy to a team who may not be as well versed in the space will ultimately result in roadblocks, dilution of strategy and resistance that could quickly put a halt to any “knock ‘em out of the park” solutions that you may be able to put in front of them.

If they don’t get it, they won’t buy it.

Remember that the social web is growing rapidly and may be intimidating to some. The advertising industry is realizing a major shift and marketers are being forced to not only give up control to consumers but also to their subordinates who may be better versed in the channel and may be considered a threat to their own job security.

As a result, you may choose to follow these steps:

1. Conduct an organizational readiness test. Begin by assessing your current organizational culture. You can use this simple Readiness Quiz to help you identify existing gaps that may pose a challenge to your efforts while allowing you the ability to set realistic expectations to how quickly your vision can be realized.
2. Identify key stakeholders and understand their fears and concerns. To advance your mandate forward you will need the support and approval from various stakeholders across different departments. Due to the nature of the social web, legal, marketing, customer service and other groups will want to ensure their interests are being addressed. To neglect any one of them could result in costly delays and unnecessary friction.
3. Create an internal communication plan. You will need to define a champion who can lead this initiative and can see it to fruition. That person will be required to educate the various teams not only on the benefits of developing an online brand community but also on how it will impact their roles, department and the company at large.

This will need to be a collaborative effort and will take time. Some will jump on board immediately while others will take time to come around. Patience, perseverance and consistent messaging will be the key ingredients to realizing success in this stage.

Answering these types of questions will provide a feeling of comfort to parties throughout the organization and creates clear lines of responsibilities which will ultimately calm any concerns about job security should any issues arise.

Depending on your organization’s comfort level at this stage you will have to gauge how aggressive you should be at first before building momentum and handing control over to the consumers at large. Don’t forget to set the expectation that it takes time to build trust with your consumers although the payoff in the end will provide better business results if done properly.

These should be customized based on your objectives and should serve to provide a snapshot of how your communications are performing. Take what is working and build upon it while recognizing where the gaps lie so that you may work on filling them in.

As you can see from above, the development of an online brand community involves much more than strictly creating a strategy to connect with consumers online. There are many moving parts with several different perspectives and interests that need to be addressed in order to move things forward. It truly needs to become a team effort to be done well!.

Jeff Pontes

Tags: Branding, Customer Experience, Digital, social media, Strategy
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