Branding Blog

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?

Wizard of Ads Michele Miller on CNBC

I just want it known that I interviewed her several weeks before CNBC. You can hear my interview on our podcast.

CNBC spent a couple of hours at Michele's home the other day for a 7-second soundbite to go along with this story about Home Depot opening a couple of new stores designed for women shoppers.

They quote her on their web site (although they misspelled her name in the text version of the story).

There are two video pieces embedded in the story. The first is a straight feature, with Michele's clip. The second video is the usual banter with the misogynist anchorman making an ass of himself. Actually, both videos seem a bit slippery. When the first one opens, I can picture Jack Black raising his eyebrows and saying a Home Depot 'for the ladies.'

If you want to know more about how to do a better job at crafting your business message to appeal to women, join me in Austin on Oct 30 & 31 for Michele's WonderBranding class. Michele's got just a couple of open seats left in the class.

So, who's watching CNBC? Did they run this story "for the ladies" or do they care?

Overheard in Cabela's Restroom

I'm washing my hands this morning after a visit to the restroom at Cabela's. Two guys come in and head to the urinals...here is the part of the conversation I heard:

"...he's an interesting guy...been hunting with Cheney...born and raised in New York...."

Are You on Tom Peter's Christmas List?

Interesting post from Tom Peters. He doesn’t order on line because his experience has taught him that he’ll typically get 90% of the way through the order before some kind of crash or failure derails him.

He phones in his orders and this post is the report card for his experience with those companies. Check it out.

Tom Peters: Not Too Bad! (Not Too Good.)

No Corporate Steak at Emil-Lenes

Ok, I don't normally do restaurant reviews here, but when I was in Denver for a session with a client, he suggested we all go to Emil-Lene's Sirloin House.

I'd never heard of it. It was great. Kind of reminds me of Dude's here in Sidney.

Emil-Lenes is inconveniently located on a back-road along the tracks, closer to the new airport than to the mountains or to downtown Denver.

I'm glad we went there. This picture sums it up nicely. There's no menu. No pretense. You get appetizers (salad and spaghetti...yes spaghetti). The only thing we didn't get was the boot on the table. I got to use the giant pepper-grinder. The steak was super. The place looks exactly like the picture. Exactly.

Is there a marketing lesson here? Yes. Be so damn good at what you do that people will gladly tell other people about you.  In our Wizard World, we call it Personal Experience Factor.

There's something to be learned here:

"Carlotta was the kind of town where they spell trouble T-R-U-B-I-L, and if you try to correct them, they kill you."
     - Rigby Reardon, Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid

Ageless Marketing: The Experiential Basis of Life Meaning

I love reading David B. Wolfe's Ageless Marketing blog. His ability to mix the phraseology that stirs the blood in the ivory towers of academia with the Seussed up words that ignite the rest of us is unparalleled. He's imminently quotable, which is why we quote him here and in our seminars. Besides, he really knows his stuff.

Key Quote from his latest blog post:

"...the yeastiest joy of their lives..."

David, when you make a trek to Wizard Academy, whether to learn or to teach, I'd like to be there.

Link: Ageless Marketing: The Experiential Basis of Life Meaning.

Geeks Studying Speaks

I've got just one comment. "Dude!"

Physicists tackle linguistics 30 November 2004 Physicists in Germany claim to have developed a new computer model that can describe how human languages evolve over time. Dietrich Stauffer and Christian Schulze of Cologne University have taken techniques used by biologists to describe evolution and applied them to the rise and fall of languages. In particular they find that the size distribution of languages - a measure of the relative popularity of different languages - can be described by a nearly "log-normal" curve (arXiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0411162).

Link: PhysicsWeb - News - Physicists tackle linguistics (November 2004).

Finish Lines or Milestones?

[Craig Arthur does a great job of taking Roy's best writing and making it accessible to more than his clients and partners. If you're not subscribed to his blog, you're missing out. -Dave]

From the Wizard Tower Chronicles by Roy H. Williams

A bank once informed their advertising consultant they had written a mission statement, developed a five year plan, and agreed upon a goal that would be the focus of all their concerted action. The directors of the bank had decided their goal would be 100% Customer Retention. A worthy goal, right?

The bank told their ad consultant they were willing to do “whatever it takes” to be certain they never lost a customer to another bank. The consultant was told his job would be to determine how to best accomplish this goal. After several weeks of gruelling research, the consultant addressed the bank’s board of directors. He said he could guarantee the bank 100% Customer Retention if once a year, they would give every customer of the bank a new convertible.

At Wizard of Ads, we ask all our clients to determine their North Star, (their destination), Uncover who they really are and develop business plans, because without them, you’re simply “flying blind.” How can you tell the public who you are when you, yourself don’t know? The bank’s mistake wasn’t in developing a mission statement or a five year plan, it was their selection of an unrealistic goal. The goal of “100% Customer Retention” sounds great, but is it really a goal, or is it just brave talk? Sure, the goal can be accomplished, but is it worth what will be required?

A goal is like the finish line of a race. Once you reach it, the race is over. I prefer to think of business as a race without a finish line, but with dozens of milestones along the way. Milestones let you know you are still on the right course, and they help you mark your progress. Milestones give you cause for celebration and encouragement at regular intervals along the way.

Take some time to consider the course ahead, and identify the milestones you will celebrate when you reach them! Milestones shouldn’t only be related to increase sales volume. A milestone might be a move into a new location, recognition by a trade association, or an invitation into a prestigious group. A number of years ago, a client told me he was looking forward to the day he could start dictating to the bank the terms of doing business with him. His favourite fantasy was of the meeting where he would tell the bank what they were going to have to do to keep his business. (We celebrated this milestone with him in early 1994.) I know a sculptor who wants to have one of his monuments become such a landmark the city would feature it on the cover of the phone book.

What are the milestones which will be meaningful to you?

© 2004 Wizard Academy® Press

Making Ads Work: Finish Lines or Milestones? Craig has a pdf version available here.

Ageless Marketing: The Art of Conditional Positioning

David Wolfe finished up a series called The Art of Conditional Positioning today. I really enjoyed the series and I think that Steve Rae's recent posts about "Customer Experience Equity" really address the same basic issue with some terrific anecdotal evidence as well. Great reading all around.

Here's an excerpt from Steve's Post:

The service we have received at the Holiday Inn has not been good enough to build enough equity. They have been missing the boat by being just average. Up until now, that was okay because we hadn’t had a poor experience. But once a bad experience happens, you need to have built up some equity with the customer to assist you in keeping them coming back.

So, if the service you’re providing is only average, please consider what it will take in your business category to do something better and build Customer Experience Equity.