Businesses can no longer afford to view consumers as commodity because products and services have become commodity. No one can afford to treat their customers with disrespect because customers now have the wherewithal to simply contract with someone else who will treat them better, choose a different brand, or drop the service altogether. That’s a fact that will only increase in validity with time, on both the high end and the low end.

On the low end, people will realize that things like over-billing and abusive phone calls are not worth the price of the service, and they will simply cancel.

On the high end, people will not tolerate customer service abuse because they can move to another company who will be happy to have them.

Your brand has never been more important
Providing great service will help people have a good experience. Great service makes you valuable. Your brand provides welcome reinforcement to the experience.

A T-Mobile agent recently told me that T-Mobile doesn’t even try to keep customers anymore. (I’m not entirely sure I believe this, but he certainly did.) He said they expect they will lose a certain number of customers every month. They also expect their competitors will lose a similar number of customers each month who will then sign up with T-Mobile. That means T-Mobile is viewing itself as a disposable company, providing a disposable service. Wow. If they view themselves as disposable, it comes across in their dialog and marketing, and customers will come to believe it too. That’s a powerfully bad attitude that will poison their brand.

It is infinitely cheaper to keep existing customers happy than it is to acquire new customers. The cost of marketing and advertising, the lower priced offers, the initial service contacts during set-up — all of these increase the cost of new customers acquisition. They also quickly add up to show the value of keeping existing customers happy.

The same thing applies if you sell a product. Just apply the parameters a bit differently. The cost of better components or ingredients will very likely outweigh the cost of marketing for new customers.

Keeping current customers happy by keeping product quality high will pay off by keeping your brand top of mind, valuable, an indispensable part of peoples’ lives.

Type is one of the primary ways you express your brand. When used in your corporate identity, it exudes a personality and imparts character. It has the power to stand out, and people really take notice. Like all things ‘brand’, it’s preferable for your text to have a unique character that actually describes your brand.

Type can express virtually any characteristic, such as wisdom, nostalgia, historical, modern, cutting edge, rebellious, conservative. You name it, it can be done with type.

What is Custom Type?
One element of graphic design that most people take for granted is type. The letters you read on every website, and in books, newspapers, magazines, advertisements, and packages have all been carefully drawn, refined, and programmed into a font by skilled graphic designers. Custom type is a typeface which has been drawn and programmed specifically for you. That means that no other business has the same type in use.

A custom typeface can be drawn from scratch, or it can be an edit to the shapes of an existing typeface. It can be just the characters used in your name, or it can be an entire alphabet, with numbers and punctuation.

Custom typefaces are common in the world of publishing. Publications such as The Wall Street Journal, Dwell and Esquire utilize custom type to add to their unique voices. From corporations to non-profits to the arts, organizations use custom type to bring a more memorable look to their identity, advertising, and other marketing communications.

How do custom typefaces work?
Since people remember information first by shape, then by color, and third by type, custom type works in double capacity — with shape and type — to make your logo and communications more memorable.

Why not use the system fonts on your computer for your logo?
Virtually everyone is familiar with system fonts, so they don’t stand out. Also, system fonts are designed for optimum on-screen readability. They are generally not optimized for print, which means they can be harder to read off screen. Are there exceptions? Sure, but they are few and far between.

When should custom type be considered?
Custom type most commonly comes into the picture with logo design, but it can also be considered for all brand and marketing communications, including advertising and collateral.

When you want your identity to speak with a voice that is unique to your business, to communicate with purpose, and embody a character all its own, you should consider custom type design.

1. Find a brand development firm or designer who truly speaks and understands the language of branding.
2. Listen to your brand consultant. If they are good, they will listen to you.
3. Take time to consider the brand strategy questions.
4. Be truthful. Don’t hold back.
5. Expect your brand to revolutionize your marketing. Know that it may take time.
6. Don’t take your brand for granted. It can be the most powerful marketing tool you will ever have.
7. Inspire your people to believe in your brand, because it is true– it’s you.
8. Stay true to your brand, and your brand will stay true to you.

Bread, beer, chips — these things go stale. Fruit rots. What do they have in common? They are all made of organic matter.

Brands do not go stale. They can’t. A brand is made of non-organics — belief and purpose. A brand can evolve, but it can’t go stale.

You could put your brand in a far corner of an unused room and leave it there for a year, and guess what? When you open the door, dust it off and polish it, your brand will be just as fresh as the day it was born. Why? Because a brand cannot go stale if it was created with integrity and truth.

The process of branding, or brand development, is all about getting inside your company’s core values and giving a visual and verbal dialog to them.

If you begin to see perceptions of your brand that are inconsistent with your values, start listening to your own dialog or that of your employees. Your brand starts within and works its way out to your audience, so if perceptions seem to be skewed, simple adjustments to your company’s dialog can steer your brand back on course.

People can go stale. Employees might lose their passion or belief in the company. Outside distractions (also called ‘life’) may pull you away from your business passion. People lose their belief, or sometimes they never understood the brand. It’s part of the natural ebb and flow of being human.

The cool thing is, people can learn, revive and reinvest themselves, and your brand will be there fully intact and ready to bust out the moves to make your company shine. All it takes is a little inspiration, focus, purpose — all the things that make a brand strong.

Ultimately, your people (or yourself if you’re a soloist) give life to your brand. Keep them informed, involved, and inspired, and your brand will remain the fresh, valuable, driving influence that fuels your marketing.

Getting there is just getting by. It’s showing up unprepared. It’s ten buck business cards, lacking any form of totally unique identity. It’s a template website that many others have, with the only difference being your picture. Getting there is your physical body and intent in the right place and the right time, but lacking the tools for people to take proper notice of how much you can rock. It’s going through the motions, but not giving people a memorable impression. Getting there is setting a lower standard than you know you can achieve.

Arriving is an awesome feeling. It’s like the event is yours, tailor-made for you. It’s where you need to be at that moment. Arriving is being totally prepared and knowing it. It’s being personally invested in your identity. It’s knowing your brand is on target because it’s you. It’s your logo making people think, your package standing out on a shelf full of competitors, your advertisement stopping people in their tracks, your website holding on to people’s attention. Arriving is success just waiting to happen. It’s you knowing why you are there. It’s being ready to rock. Arriving is knowing that people will leave remembering who you are and how you fit into their life.

A long-time friend contacted me a couple months ago to answer some questions about my experience in purchasing one of his offerings. Instead of contacting me directly, however, he submitted his needs to a student program to develop a marketing plan for him. When I found this out, I was stunned.

This is an established vendor who has been in business for many years, but he has long struggled in defining his niche, which makes hiring him difficult. After all, if he doesn’t know his specialty, how can I know which work ideally suits him?

A student marketing plan is unlikely to help a struggling business all that much, and it’s not because they’re students. It’s because you know deep down that students are inexperienced, and inexperience breeds doubt. Where there’s doubt, there’s lack of action. In other words, it’s easy to blow off a plan if you don’t trust the people who developed it. Worse, however, is that fact that if you doubt your own identity, you are going to be lacking in clarity of purpose.

It is nearly impossible to develop a good marketing plan if you are lacking clarity of purpose (something deeper than ‘make more money’). Any marketing plan is virtually useless if you don’t know yourself well enough to confidently state who you are and what you do. That’s precisely what the process of brand development provides: clarity of self and purpose, so that you can present yourself and your offerings without flinching – ever.

Developing a marketing plan before your brand is very much a case of putting the cart before the horse. Having students develop that marketing plan is sure to see your horse running smack into the cart, breaking its nose and very probably a leg. People put horses down for breaking a leg.

Coincidentally, people close businesses for lack of clarity, which results in not knowing your niche, lacking a strong brand identity, not trusting your marketing plan (thus not using it), and not connecting with your target audience – all of which either keeps you in the dark or forces business closure due to lack of sales.

Branding is hard work, but it pays off in spades when you use an experienced professional. When branding is done right, the results of the work provide so much clarity that your marketing can become nearly fail-proof.

If you are lost or floundering and don’t know which way to go with your marketing, take a step back, and get an honest account of your brand. Get your brand and identity straight, then work with a pro to devise a marketing plan you can actually put into action.

Washington Business Center presents: Kelly Hobkirk, What Does Branding Mean to You and Your Business?

Bellevue City Hall. Feb. 26, 8:00 – 10:00 a.m. Registration opens at 7:30 a.m.

Have you ever chosen a work of art in an art show opening, frame shop, or *gasp* online catalog? Do you recall glazing over all of the choices until you came to the one that shined like a beacon to some part of your mind, practically screaming out to you, ‘Pick me! I’m the one! I was made just for you!’? Think about that feeling for a second. It’s a special one. And it has nothing at all to do with strategy, graphic design or marketing.

So why mention it?

Well, it goes like this: Design or advertising without strategy is essentially nothing more than art. Art is wonderful stuff, but it has little practical application or value in marketing communications. Strategy, on the other hand, allows your company to exceed expectations in its marketing efforts.

As my awesome great aunt CeCe once wrote to me in a care package over 20 years ago:
Art is great
and work is neat
But everybody’s
got to eat.

What makes art a valuable part of your marketing? Strategy.

What is design and advertising’s best friend? Strategy.

What’s the number one thing clients try to avoid in their marketing? Come on, take a guess — Why it’s Strategy!

Strategy makes it easier for you to eat, so why do people run, kick and scream to avoid it? Why? Well, first off, making art is a heckuva lot easier. Strategy punches holes in weak concepts. It forces you to take your marketing seriously. Probably its worst offense is appearing to take the fun out of art. But honestly, strategy is incredibly fun. You may need to adjust your idea of fun, but as a benefit, you also get to raise your aspirations to an all-time high.

Strategy at its best
Let’s take a look at Lance Armstrong’s record seven Tour de France titles. People say that his dominance wasn’t fun. He turned winning the Tour into a science, methodically attacking absolutely every aspect of the race, from weighing out each meal on a scale, to his training, attack strategies, playing off the media to gain advantages, and surrounding himself with some of the sport’s top riders as lieutenants. After he did all that (and more), he rode his heart out to claim the victories.

Now, Mr. Armstrong has been gifted with exceptional physiology, and many claim that’s why he wins. While this may be true, it is advantageous for people to think that way. When you discard something great to prove you are not worthy, you are in fact employing a kill-strategy to avoid doing the one thing that can help you succeed. Why do that? It’s easier.

If you need proof to accept this, take a look at Armstrong’s competitors. During his reign as Tour champion, he released a book with his coach and even had a tv program detailing his training methods and life. What did his competitors and other people say then? Impossible. No one can train that hard and be so self-disciplined. Why would they say that? Simple, it’s easier.

What it takes
Everyone knows that it takes hard work to succeed. It takes a few other things too, such as calculated risk-taking, preparation, dedication, self-discipline, and strategy.

Big businesses have a sometimes not-so-obvious advantage here because they have the larger budgets and people to examine concepts from more angles. And sometimes, they do it. Those are the companies that live, thrive and dominate a market.

Small businesses, on the other hand, rarely have the people or organizational structure to even think about strategy. They are usually too close to their work to have the objectivity needed to succeed. The result is marketing that often falls on its face. Oddly, they are ok with that because it justifies not putting in the key efforts it takes to succeed. Of course, it also gives business owners justification to not budget for strong marketing efforts.

People get to go home early, there’s less to manage, less to spend, less outsider involvement, less less, less. And less profits.

Why would anyone sabotage their own business like that? Well, honestly, it’s easier to make just enough money to be profitable than it is to be wildly profitable. It’s not nearly as much fun though.

Strategy is so much fun!
In spite of Lance Armstrong’s methodical approach to winning the Tour de France, I would be willing to place a level bet that he was having fun. And so was everyone around him. Were there hard times and tough moments? Of course. Everyone had to rise to the occasion, with the benefit being greater success for nearly anyone willing to work alongside him.

It’s the same for business. When you get a high response to a measured effort, you feel awesome. Big smiles abound, everyone feels happy, and you increase profits.

Where there’s a leader there is success, and people will follow. If you own a business, you’re a leader, whether you like it or not. If you share your plan with your employees, they will follow you. The more detail you provide, the more personally invested they become. (If you fail to show a clear vision, you have a higher turnover rate.)

Now, apply purpose, vision, and strategy to your branding and marketing, and what have you got? You have the means to develop strategic plans for success. You have an identity that your employees can relate to. You have a brand that people can believe in. You have marketing that is wildly successful. You have increased sales.

First things first
It doesn’t work the other way around. You cannot show people a business that doesn’t believe in itself, and expect them to believe in you. You cannot passively market to prospective clients, and turn them into believers.

It has to start from within. You believe in yourself, and others will believe in you. Your employees believe in the company, and your prospective customers believe in what you are selling. You market to them with strategy, they buy, and you exceed your sales goals.

Do you think Lance Armstrong’s lieutenants, staff, and entourage went into his first Tour de France thinking he would win seven of them? Nope. But they came to believe in him. He built a following by first believing in himself, then he strategically attacked the race he wanted to dominate. And it worked.

What are you trying to win?
Lance Armstrong used strategy to make an art of winning the Tour de France. Whether you’re trying to win more clients, repeat business, a warmer feeling in your heart, or the front spot in the water cooler line, you can do the same.

Is Your Brand Sexy?

It should be.

I can already hear people saying, “I’m a consultant. I don’t want to be sexy, I want to be professional, knowledgeable. I want to command respect.” I’ve worked with corporations who said they didn’t want to be sexy because they had to be professional. In the right context, your knowledge and professionalism are sexy. They command respect because to the right people they are sexy, especially when your identity makes them so.

What is sexy, really? It’s what turns us on, what stimulates emotional connections. ‘Sexy’ is defined differently by each person. What is sexy to you and me, or your neighbor, friend or really anyone is likely very different.

Brands are sexy. They appeal to the various senses, values, and intricacies of our personalities. I’m not just talking about what appeals to us in a romantic or animalistic sense. Rather, I’m referring to the unique aspects of our personalities. One of a brand’s primary functions is to appeal to those unique intricacies.

It’s not all about curves and six-pack abs. Sexy can mean intelligent design, utilitarian functionality, freaking awesome ease-of-use, slick surfaces, or a smooth delivery. It can mean strength of character, clear purpose, infectious desire, or inherent trust. Sexy brands can take your breath away or fill up your soul.

Brands do all of these things because they appeal to our unique core desires while filling a need. What is at the very center of our basic needs? Desire and survival instinct. Well-crafted brands appeal to these basics, and the basics can be applied to nearly anything.

When your brand is sexy, your employees take greater interest and invest their own identities in it. When your employees are invested, it comes across in their commitment and their communication. A sexy brand turns on employees’ imaginations. It ignites their motivation, so they can fuel their innate desire to give their best efforts towards achieving your vision of your company.

How is your brand sexy?