Branding Blog

Still a rooms left for Fight the Big Boys and Win

Unbelievable. There are still a few rooms of student housing available for next week's inaugural session of "Fight the Big Boys and Win" at Wizard Academy.

I was talking to Mike Dandridge yesterday about the class. He and co-teacher Tom Wanek have a lot of fun planned and everyone should come away with a plan to really take the customer experience of their business to a higher level. Customer experience is what triggers word of mouth. An average customer experience won't do it. The experience has to be lousy (for negative word of mouth...hehehe) or remarkable. Think about that word: Remarkable. That's what it takes.

It's getting kind of late for plane tickets, I know. The experience of attending your first class at Wizard Academy PLUS the opportunity to stay at Engelbrecht House on campus with your fellow students is a REMARKABLE event.

If you live in Austin, be sure to check it out. We have one student, owner of a prosperous accounting firm in Austin, who regularly stays on campus for classes. She lives just down the road. Literally a 12-minute walk from Wizard Academy.

Monday Morning Memo: Customer Profiles

By Roy H. Williams (go to MondayMorningMemo.com to listen to this memo.)

I’ve never seen a business fail due to reaching the wrong people. But if you listen to advertising sales reps, “reaching the right people” will solve all your problems.

And guess who has exactly the right people for you?

Can I have a Kindle?

A couple of friends already have one. They love it. I'm jealous. I want one.

I didn't want one quite so bad before I saw that they are back in stock!

Monday Morning Memo: Archetypal Patterns, Parts II and III

Two weeks ago, Roy Williams sent out Part I of a series on Archetypal Patterns.

Last week was Part II. Today, comes Part III.  For small business owners, these are mandatory reading.

I'm going to send you on an adventure. Read them both, but read them on his site. Be sure to follow the rabbit down the hole by clicking on the images in the memo. Keep clicking on images until you get to the bottom of the hole.

Warning: Don't follow the rabbit hole unless you have a few spare minutes to play in the woods.

Remarkable Direct Mail: Veer

This was the coolest thing I've received in the mail for ages. I'm not spilling the secrets here. You'll just have to go find out. Veer.

"The kerning pair went everywhere."

Word of Mouth: A Strategy and a Society

First, the strategy: Anna Gerard wrote up a nice story about a fish market near her home in Australia.

"People here have this deep belief that the closer the seafood shop is to the water, the fresher the seafood."

Read how her favorite seafood shop has closed the loop and made the customers feel like the water has come to the shop.

Now, the Society: I joined the Society for Word of Mouth last week. SWOM (members are Swommies) was started about a month ago by Jackie Huba and Ben McConnell of Church of the Customer fame. It's free and it's a fun group of people. The SWOM website uses the Ning platform so it's full of social niceties. You get to build your own page and contribute to forums and a group blog. Come on in, the water's warm!

Monday Morning Memo: Archetypal Patterns

Do athletic kids read Wheaties boxes, or do the readers of Wheaties boxes become athletes?

In part one of this series, Roy H. Williams helps us see how our brains strive to conform our lives to the patterns we pay attention to.

In today's P.S. on the memo, he mentions a seminar being hosted by our U.K. Partner, John Cassidy-Rice on May 13. Peter Nevland will be there. I've got travel plans elsewhere that week or I'd jump across the pond. If you can make it, you should. Hanging out with Peter is always a good time.

I think you'll like today's memo...

Advertising vs. Being Remarkable

"Advertising is a tax you pay for being unremarkable."
-Geek Squad founder Robert Stephens

There are STILL plenty of very smart people in the world who have not begun to realize the power of the web. For some, it's a fear of technology. Others have been too busy engaged in successful business. Still others just have their heads in the sand.

I was having a conversation with a group of very successful brick and mortar jewelers a couple of weeks ago. We were talking about my blogging class and they asked if I knew of any jewelers who have had any measure of success with blogging. I pointed them to Ice.com and their use of a blog strategy to tie their name to celebrities and provide lots of in-bound links to products.

Then, they asked me if I could name a business that has achieved any kind of success with YouTube?

Watch the "Presentation Zen" Presentation

Thanks to Pam at Escape from Cubicle Nation for sharing the Presentation Zen talk at Google.

Garr Reynold's book was a big help for a recent presentation I gave in Australia and I've been recommending it to everyone I know who does any kind of presenting, even on the web.  (Especially after one of my partners recommended it to me!)

Watch the video after the jump...

How Diamond Advertising Brought me back to Music

After 20 years in the radio business, I was burned out on music. I haven’t listened to more than an hour of music radio in the past 8 years. Really. I’d heard it all. I was tired of listening just to see if there was “dead” air, the bane of all broadcasters.

I have a small list of  about 100 songs that I listen to when I sleep on airplanes.

About a week ago, as I flipped through channels looking for something to tide me over between Top Gear and the next Kitchen Nightmares show, I stopped on a repeat of a Leno broadcast from a few months ago. He was just introducing some guy named Landon Pigg. Not very deep, am I. I chuckled at the name and decided to give the guy about 10 seconds before I clicked on.