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Getting Noticed on the Web

By Jerry Bader in Featured

Website Engagement Techniques: The Caricature Effect

Marketing is all about getting noticed, getting remembered, and motivating people to action. Whether it’s a website, display ad, or video, it must first grab people’s attention, it must stop the viewer from going onto the next website, turning the magazine page, or clicking the stop button. In order to accomplish that increasingly difficult task, you must understand the Caricature Effect.

The Caricature Effect

The Caricature Effect simply stated says that what we notice is variation from the norm. Caricature artists exaggerate reality because that is how we visually distinguish one person from another. Human beings are preprogrammed to look for patterns and variations in those patterns, it’s how we recognize who people are, and it is a basic survival mechanism that helps us recognize danger and distinguish friend from foe.

By distorting an individual’s prominent facial features the caricature artist mimics the human brain’s way of remembering who’s who. Our brains are not cameras that take pictures and file them away for future reference. Our memories are malleable, they change and alter over time and experience, and as a result the things we remember best are the things that stand out, things like Bob Hope’s ski-jump nose or Albert Einstein’s wild white hair. The reason caricatures are so effective is because they emphasize the distinguishing differences that we recognize and remember. So how do we use this fundamental, hard-wired human characteristic to further marketing agendas?

10 Tips to Build Your Network of Mentors – A SPN Exclusive Article

By Sara Schoonover in Featured

Just because you have a killer business idea doesn’t mean you have killer business skills. The most successful young entrepreneurs recognize their own limitations and lack of experience. They rely on a network of seasoned and successful business mentors to give them the advice they need when they need it.

Finding those mentors is often easier said than done, however. While some people may have success walking into a CEO’s office and simply asking, there are more effective and more natural ways to find mentors.

Here are 10 tips to get you started building your network of mentors:

1. Know what you want to get out of a mentoring relationship. Not every mentoring relationship is the same. You need to know exactly what it is that you need help with, and how the mentoring relationship should benefit you. You might need help with business strategy, networking, the work-life balance, or more. Maybe you need comprehensive advice, but in some cases you may just need a sounding board.

2. Find a mentor with whom you have chemistry. Don’t just accept anyone into your network of mentors. You need to click with these people. If you have diametrically opposed views on marketing, for example, you’re going to have a hard time connecting on related topics.

3. Start by looking at your family and friends. Your first mentors may be people with whom you’ve had a relationship most of your life. A trusted aunt or a grandfather, for example, may have business experience from which you can learn. These are wonderful early mentors, because they may be more patient and understanding as you grow and develop, and they may be more willing to make that mentoring commitment early on.

4. Grow your network of mentors via your extended network of associations. After you’ve exhausted resources among family and friends, start looking to acquaintances, colleagues, former or current employers, and others in your extended circles of influence.

5. Some of the best mentorship opportunities will come from strangers. Let’s face it: unless you’re going into the family business, chances are you’re not going to find a mentor who’s wildly successful in your field. That means you need to seek out those wildly successful people. Approach those prospects humbly and delicately. Schedule a brief telephone conversation, limit the call to a handful of very specific questions. If it goes well, raise the idea of a repeat phone call. After a while, you may be able to raise the prospect of a more formal mentoring arrangement.

6. Look into SCORE. SCORE is a group associated with the Small Business Association. It consists of retired executives and professionals who have a passion for helping up-and-coming entrepreneurs. They offer free and confidential mentoring. SCORE mentors can be a bit hit-or-miss, depending on your industry, but in general they can offer a useful perspective and are more than willing to give advice.

7. Check out the Chamber. Many local Chambers of Commerce offer mentoring connections. The key thing here is that, if a given chamber member is in the same niche as you, it’s going to be much harder to convince them to work with you. After all, if you’re currently starting a business, they don’t want to be responsible for training their competition.

8. Look for industry specific opportunities. For example, if you do contracting for the federal government there is a mentor program offered by the Small Business Administration that helps you understand how to grab government contracts.

9. Consider local options. Larger cities often have mentorship programs in their business communities. The Silver Fox Advisers in Houston is a good example of this. Chicago, Detroit, and Jersey City all have non-profit groups that focus on mentoring for businesses run by women and minorities, too.

10. Pay for it if you have to. There are paid mentors out there, as well. Often going under the moniker of “Business Coaches,” these mentors will often be very hyper-focused. They will provide some of the most efficient mentoring relationships, mainly because both of you realize that the relationship is costing you money.

Finding and building your network of mentors takes some serious legwork. Chances are you’ll face some rejection along the way. The good news is that there are many people out there in business who have experienced success, and who are more than willing to take a budding entrepreneur under their wing in a mentoring relationship. Keep looking until your mentoring needs are met, and you’ll find your business skills growing by leaps and bounds.

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Sara Schoonover is Vice President of Ticket Kick, a California company that helps drivers get red light tickets, speeding tickets and other traffic tickets dismissed by helping drivers through the trial by written declaration process. The company, which formally launched in 2010 after providing similar services since 2006, is the leading company in this space and growing rapidly.

Ten Steps to Building a Loyal Readership – A SPN Exclusive Article

By Dan Stokes in Featured

Starting a blog from scratch can be intimidating. There are a countless number of established blogs on the web, and you must differentiate yourself to compete. These ten steps can help guide you on your way to penetrating the elite fraternity of professional bloggers, and building a loyal readership.

1. Have a Plan

One of my favorite quotes comes from Lewis Carrol and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by way of the Cheshire Cat – “If you don’t know where you’re going, how do you expect to get there?”

Decide early on what the specific goals of your blog might be. If you don’t outline your goals, you will risk writing meandering content that will lack focus. Write a detailed business plan and content schedule to avoid getting too far off track. Compiling a list of article topics early on can help you avoid the dilemma of writers block every blogger experiences.

2. Be Yourself

Whatever you do, don’t try to be something you’re not. This can be one of the most difficult obstacles for newbies to overcome when launching a blog. After all, you probably decided to go out on your own after reading other blogs and websites. Everyone is influenced to some degree, but to truly be successful, you must find a way to stand out from the pack. Take a break from reading your competitors’ material for a few days before launching to avoid the temptation to imitate and to crystallize your blog concept.

3. Be Unique

Quite often, aspiring bloggers make the decision to begin publishing content because they have a unique opinion and a voice that is unheard. This is the way it’s supposed to be, and Google rewards the concept through high search rankings. Bloggers whose only goal is to make money often write uninspiring content, and find themselves banging their collective heads against the wall to improve their SERPs. Research other blogs in your niche to see what is being talked about, and more importantly, what is not.

4. Show Your Personality

I know many bloggers who are funny, entertaining, and interesting, but don’t let their true colors show in their posts. Think about your audience only so far as determining your voice. Speak from the heart and don’t worry about what people think.

5. Write With a Purpose

Another mistake many bloggers make is to get trapped into the idea that they must post content every single day. If you don’t have anything to say, don’t say it. You never know when a potentially loyal reader will stumble across your content. It is always beneficial to have your best content front and center when new users visit your site. Furthermore, if you post entries that are hollow, or appear to be forced, you risk turning off the users who followed you for your unique perspective.

6. Interact With Your Audience

User generated content is the best kind of content. It’s easy, free, and hands-off. However, it’s not always easy to sit back and let readers write your content for you. In the early stages of blogging, it’s important to respond to every single comment, even if it’s simply to agree with the commenter’s sentiments. Users are more likely to join an existing conversation than to kick one off by logging the first comment.

7. Link to Quality Content

Don’t be afraid to share interesting content from other blogs. A common mistake bloggers make is to be overly stingy with external linking. It’s easy to read a Page Rank 101 guide that admonishes sharing link juice, but you may find that linking to interesting content improves your ranking. Linking to great content adds value to your users and should add value to your blog. Additionally, webmasters might notice incoming links to their sites and decide to link back to you.

8. Write Conversationally

Your written word should sound as if it were flowing from your tongue. Avoid the temptation to break out a thesaurus to use flowery language. Readers can spot unnatural language from a mile away, and if they feel it isn’t genuine, you may lose credibility. Rather, you should use your unique voice and perspective to your advantage.

9. Detail Your Credibility

Chances are you have chosen to blog about something you know a thing or two about. Be sure your readers know this. Tell them why you are writing about your subject matter and don’t be shy when it comes to your qualifications. Readers want to read blogs written by experts, so let them know why they should listen to you. Create an “about” page that serves as a virtual resume listing your relative experience and accomplishments.

10. Utilize Social Media

Add social media links to your site to show new readers that they’re not alone. Facebook likes, fans, and Twitter followers serve as testimonials from like-minded readers on the web. If you are just starting out, ask your friends and existing social network to share and endorse your content. Users are more likely to share content that has already been shared.

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Dan is a search engine optimization expert and marketing consultant. In his free time he blogs about baseball and various other topics.

What Facebook Changes Mean for Your Brand

By Ashley Ray in Featured

The recent Facebook changes are game changing. For most this is scary; for us (and hopefully for you, too) it’s exciting! Facebook has managed to make our everyday activities even more social and has created a way for us to share our lives via a virtual scrapbook. This tool lets you feature all your old and new Facebook memories with integrated ways to express yourself through different “lifestyle apps.” Luckily for you, we read every article, and we watched the entire 1-hour, 40-minute f8 presentation, so we are here to condense the information for you as much as possible.

Here are the Facebook changes you should know about:

Only a few things are really going away; it’s the experience and interface that are changing. Here are the latest and greatest new features of Facebook:

The Facebook Timeline — “The story of your life”

The Timeline is the central change in the Facebook revamp. It is your new Facebook profile, completely reorganized with a different way to display your profile picture — a giant picture of you (your cover photo) at the top and a smaller picture (your profile picture) layered at the bottom right of the cover picture. The way the new timeline is set up allows you to keep all of those past memories, updates and posts in an organized manner through a timeline. You can scroll to any time period via the timeline on the side of your “cover photo.” In the f8 conference, Mark Zuckerberg talked about your old profile being what you would tell someone you met within the first 5 minutes: where you work, where you went to school, where you live, etc. This is all condensed and placed below your profile picture now.

Is Your Brand Worth Professional Treatment?

By Jerry Bader in Featured

You may not remember the 1950s but the so-called “Golden Age” of television was in general pretty bad. Yes, there were some great, groundbreaking programs, but there was also a lot of crap, especially the commercials that for the most part were emotionally and psychologically clumsy despite their pseudo-innocence.

We may be nostalgic for Speedy Alka Seltzer but it hardly stacks up to the Evian Baby T-Shirt videos that to my mind were even better than the more famous Roller Babies, a campaign where technical gimmickry overpowered the message. Of course in the 50s, the medium was new and the technology was rudimentary, especially by today’s standards.

With an audience raised on radio, TV producers could get away with almost anything, but today’s audience brought up on television and big budget movies expect and demand a far greater level of presentation sophistication.

If you want to communicate to today’s Web audience, you have to understand the techniques used to make your message understood and memorable. And just as importantly, you have to understand the negative impact of video presentation inadequacies. When we speak of ineffective communication, we are not just talking about technical issues like poor lighting and audio room tone, but more importantly poor messaging and mediocre performance.

Personal Branding: 5 Profitable Reasons Why You Should Brand Yourself

By David Jackson in Featured

Have you ever tried to hammer a nail with the heel of your shoe? I did once, when I was a kid and didn’t have a hammer handy. It can be done, but I can assure you, it’s difficult – very, very difficult. So too is trying to build a business without branding yourself.

So, what exactly is personal branding?

In essence, personal branding is the process by which business people differentiate themselves by identifying and effectively articulating what makes them different or unique from their competitors – what makes them stand out from the crowd – a sort of personal USP (Unique Selling Proposition), if you will. This is especially important if you’re a service provider in a competitive field.

Why is personal branding so important?

Because if you don’t stand out from the crowd, that means you’re just like everyone else – a white jelly bean in a jar full of white jelly beans. And if you’re just like everyone else, why should customers or clients choose you over your competitors? Answer: They shouldn’t, and they probably won’t!

Using myself as a real-life example, let me illustrate the importance of personal branding, and how it can make you stand out in a crowded field.

My name, “David Jackson” is a relatively common name. To make matters worse, there are many other David Jackson’s with business websites who have been online a lot longer than I have and are far more established.

But if you type “david jackson marketing” into Google without the quotation marks, I rank at the #1 position out of nearly 3 million pages. And if you just type in the name “david jackson” without the quotation marks. I rank #4 out of over 42 million pages. That didn’t happen by accident. That happened because I was relentless in establishing my personal brand.

When I created my website 3 years ago, my #1 objective was to have people associate my name with marketing – consistently solid marketing advice and quality marketing articles. And I was relentless in pursing that objective. Mission accomplished, but I’m not resting on my laurels.

Today, I’m just as relentless in trying to hold on to my top Google ranking. The numerous published articles on my site, as well as top authority sites keeps me highly visible, as well as provide the search engine spiders with plenty of fresh, quality, relevant nourishment.

And what are the overall results of all my hard work? Well, because of my personal branding efforts, I’m so busy with my consulting business, I’m actually turning clients away. Such is the power of personal branding and relentless execution.

Following are 5 profitable reasons why you should establish your personal brand:

1. Gain Expert Status

Without branding yourself, people will not perceive you as an expert. You will simply be another carnival barker in a sea full of carnival barkers. Branding yourself will give you expert status (provided, of course, you really are an expert) – and a much bigger megaphone.

2. Credibility and Trust

With the advent of the Internet and the world-wide dominance of Google, nowadays, as a business person, you are pretty much your Google search results. Let’s face it, any responsible person considering doing business with you is going to do their due diligence and search for information about you online to see if you’re legitimate and trustworthy. And if they can’t find you, or have a hard time finding you in Google’s universe, guess who’s going to get their business?

That’s right, if your competitors are more visible than you are in the search results, the perception will be, they’re more professional and trustworthy than you are. That means they’re going to get the business you could be getting. The best way to prevent that from happening is to effectively establish your personal brand – stand out in the crowd.

3. Gain An Edge On Your Competition

Earlier, I described personal branding as “the process by which business people differentiate themselves by identifying and effectively articulating what makes them different or unique from their competitors – what makes them stand out from the crowd – sort of a personal USP (Unique Selling Proposition).”

I also said, “If you don’t stand out from the crowd, that means you’re just like everyone else – a white jelly bean in a jar full of white jelly beans. And if you’re just like everyone else, why should customers or clients choose you over your competitors?”

Well, by effectively establishing your personal brand, you automatically become a black jelly bean in a jar full of white jelly beans. You stand out!

4. Increase Your Value

Establishing your personal brand will increase your perceived value and give you the ability to charge higher fees – provided, of course, you’re good at what you do. This will automatically increase your income. And if you are really good at what you do and your clients are satisfied, they will refer you to other clients. Higher fees, satisfied clients and referrals…This personal branding thing is sounding better all the time, isn’t it?

5. Gain Confidence

As you become more and more successful because of your personal branding efforts, you will also become more confident. This confidence will be obvious to everyone who comes into contact with you, including potential clients who will be magnetically attracted to you because of your confidence.

In closing, I didn’t write this article to teach you “how” to brand yourself. I wrote it to educate you on “why” you should brand yourself. If you want to learn how to brand yourself, there are personal branding experts far more qualified than I who can teach you about personal branding. One of the absolute best is Dan Schwabel (PersonalBrandingBlog.com).

There are also some excellent books on the subject. Two of my favorites are You Are a Brand!: How Smart People Brand Themselves for Business Success by Catherine Kaputa and The 10Ks of Personal Branding: Create a Better You by Kaplan Mobray.

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David Jackson is a marketing consultant and the owner of Free-Marketing-Tips-Blog.com – Powerful, free marketing tips to help grow your business! http://free-marketing-tips-blog.com

8 Brand Video Story Development Concepts

By Jerry Bader in Featured

The Web has spawned many great opportunities for people in general and businesses in particular. One of the byproducts of ubiquitous access and use is the ability of anyone with a Web-ready device and Internet connection to participate. Pardon me for being cynical, but maybe not everyone is capable of participating in a meaningful manner. What I’m saying is the Web has created a whole new venue for amateurism that has both positive and negative consequences.

The High Cost of Amateurism

On the positive side many creative and intelligent people are now able to present their talents and knowledge to a global audience whereas ‘Before The Web Era’ they had to settle for friends and family or at best a local audience. On the downside, just because everyone can do something doesn’t mean they should. I am not even talking about the silly, uninformed comments that appear everywhere, or even the dumb-and-dumber user-generated videos that highlight adolescent stunts and salacious exhibitionism. What I am talking about is how so many legitimate businesses opt for amateur video presentations without the slightest understanding of the damage they are doing to their
businesses.

To my mind, your image and message are far too important to leave up to amateurs who don’t understand how to develop and present a marketing message using the Web video medium, a medium that differs from television advertising and corporate presentations as much as it differs from print. For those who think that professional Web video is too expensive, I would advise the real cost of DIY and amateurism is lost sales and reputation.

Creative Brilliance and Logo Design – A SPN Exclusive Article

By Gayle Hawks in Featured

David Ogilvy, who’s widely considered the father of modern advertising, focused heavily on creative brilliance – the BIG IDEA (which he always wrote in ALL CAPITAL LETTERS) was of extreme importance to him. In his opinion creativity and originality were useless unless they brought results for clients with whom he did business. When presenting something in an ad, it had to be functional and relevant. “Unless your advertising is based on a BIG IDEA, it will pass like a ship in the night”, he preached over and over again.

Thankfully, his emphasis on the BIG IDEA doesn’t need to translate into complexity. Simplicity, especially in the area of logo design is something we can still adhere to while following Mr. Ogilvy’s advice. So, with that in mind, I’d like to offer a few thoughts for those of you who are just starting the process of thinking through a logo design for your new company.

There are many logos that can be highlighted as examples of accomplishing the BIG IDEA while remaining simple at the same time. There are many global companies who adhere successfully to this:

- 3M
- AT&T
- Adobe Systems
- Caterpillar (CAT)
- Citi Group
- Dell
- Electronic Arts
- Verisign
- UPS
- SnapOn

All of these companies have simple, yet incredibly effective logos that identify their companies. These companies are industry leaders and well known around the world simply through their logos. Several of these companies have created incredible revenue streams just through the marketing of their logos. Many of these companies sell apparel and other merchandise that displays their logos, which in turn generates millions of dollars in additional revenue for their companies. They are simple, yet extraordinarily successful logos.

Logo designs for some recent corporations would easily fall under the same, simplistic design parameter. Some examples would include such company logos as:

- Aflac
- GoDaddy
- Apple
- Monster Worldwide
- Google
- Yum! Brands
- Yahoo!

Several of these companies are focused solely on the Internet. Google, Yahoo!, GoDaddy, and Monster Worldwide are primarily web based companies. However, their branding and logos are universally recognized symbols for them. Yum! Brands is an internationally recognized company. Not only is their logo simple and easily recognizable, but so are the restaurants it owns: Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and Long John Silver’s. Aflac’s logo is simply a combination of their name and the primary character of every advertisement…the duck. However, every time someone sees it, they immediately recall the last advertisement they saw. They say “Aflac” in their best duck voice, and they recall the type of insurance services they provide. Their logo is simple, yet exceptionally valuable to their mission as a company. Their logo is the pinnacle of creative brilliance and sums up the BIG IDEA for Aflac. In fact, every one of these logos functions the same way for each of these companies. Their logo completely fulfills the mission of their BIG IDEA.

As we mentioned earlier, most of these companies generate millions of dollars in additional revenue for their companies by simply selling items that display their logos. Think about NASCAR, the NFL, and the myriad of other places where advertising reigns supreme. These companies are all present there. They have created an additional product by simply creating a recognizable symbol for their company that people want to purchase. The consumer is interested in attaching themselves to a company and identifying with them through the usage of their logo on apparel, stickers, and additional products.

The power of exercising creative brilliance and generating the BIG IDEA for your company logo is so amazingly important. This is the reason that virtually everyone recommends seeking professional help in designing a great logo for your company or new product. There are two very poignant quotes from David Ogilvy that sum up the importance of designing your logo correctly. Ogilvy said, “It takes a BIG IDEA to attract the attention of consumers and get them to buy your product,” and “Unless your advertising contains a BIG IDEA, it will pass like a ship in the night.”

So, what’s your BIG IDEA and how are you implementing it into your logo design?

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Color Card Administrator is the parent company of PrintBusinessCards.com and several other innovative Real Estate Business Cards website, we’re eager to share with you what it is we do. Give us a call today at 858-522-9335 or email at Author@CardAdmin.com for Online Business Cards. We look forward to discussing your comments, suggestions, or hearing any ideas for future article topics you may be interested in regarding business cards design or business card management.

Can You Make a Great Impression in Seven Seconds? – A SPN Exclusive Article

By Gayle Hawks in Featured

In some circles of Internet Marketing, there is a pervasive thought that says you have less than 10 seconds to make a good impression with the homepage of any website. If someone views the homepage of a site and doesn’t like it within the first 10 seconds, they leave and move on to another site. Some people say you have even less time! With many marketing professionals, they say it is around 7 seconds. 7 seconds?!

There are many people who use what is referred to as ‘The Rule of 7′ in many facets of their lives and business. The number 7 comes up an incredible amount of times in everyday life. What’s so special about the number seven? We have the Seven Wonders of the World, the seven seas, the seven deadly sins, the seven levels of hell, the seven primary colors, and the seven days of the week? What about the 7 tips for a better (insert your favorite topic here). Why are there only seven numbers in everyone’s phone number?

There is no real concrete reason why the number seven so heavily influences our lives. In 1956, psychologist George Miller, after extensive study, wrote a paper entitled, “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information”. In his study, he equated seven to the maximum number of information segments that humans can process at any given time. While his view on the subject is somewhat contested in various circles, it does raise some interesting questions and ideas.

Malcolm Gladwell is a journalist who took some of George Miller’s ideas and ran with them in the realm of social psychology. In his book, “Tipping Point”, he says, “as human beings we can only handle so much information at once. Once we pass a certain boundary, we become overwhelmed.” He then goes on to recount some of Miller’s research and comes up with that boundary being near six or seven points maximum.

What we do know is that seven is an important number. So, if we use the ‘seven second impression’ time limit as our benchmark in the design and presentation of your website’s homepage and navigation, then how do we make the best use of those seven precious seconds? Since we’re discussing the enigmatic number seven, let’s create seven guidelines to use:

1. Simplicity

Simple, yet attractive works well. Unique and creative doesn’t have to mean complicated and overwhelming. Many times too much action and information on a homepage becomes overwhelming, causing people to click away quickly. Many website designs feature seven main operation/navigation buttons (coincidence? Nah!).

2. Purpose

What is the purpose of the site? Make it immediately clear. “Great taste – Less Filling” is the idea here. Lean and mean. In the spirit of simplicity, get right to the point with the site’s message. Where do you want to take a site visitor? Make it abundantly clear.

3. Consistency in Layout

Make sure that your site’s layout remains consistent from page to page. People get frustrated when they have to search how to go from page 3 back to the home page. Ensure that your navigation process is simple and consistent throughout the entire site. Make sure that everything you incorporate into the site revolves around being user-friendly and interactive.

4. Know What the Competition is Doing

Research your competitor’s sites, find out what they are doing right, and do it better on your company’s site!

5. Professional in Content

While you may be considered the most knowledgeable person about your company’s products and services, you’re ability to write perfect prose may be questionable. It’s always a good idea to hire a writer to create your site’s content. Or, if you want to generate the message yourself, consider hiring a proofreader and/or editor to review the text for the site. It’s in poor taste to have an excellently designed website that is full of run-on sentences, misspellings, and improper punctuation. Create a completely professional package by making sure your content is written correctly.

6. Test the Site Yourself

Put yourself in the position of a potential customer/site visitor. Use the site from their point of view. If the site is set up to process orders, then go through the entire order process. Make sure it is error free, not confusing, and transitions smoothly throughout the whole process.

7. Ask Others to Evaluate for You

Ask other people to use the site and review it for you. Asking for outside help can sometimes bring to light issues that you may have never noticed on your own. Try to use a broad cross section of people to review the site. In doing this you will get a good snapshot of the effectiveness of the site.

These seven guidelines are not all inclusive. There are other things that rank highly in importance too for ensuring you get the most “bang for your buck” in the precious seven to ten second opportunity you have with a visitor to your company’s website. However, these are seven extremely critical components that should always be considered.

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Color Card Administrator is the parent company of PrintBusinessCards.com and several other innovative Real Estate Business Cards website, we’re eager to share with you what it is we do. Give us a call today at 858-522-9335 or email at Author@CardAdmin.com for Online Business Cards. We look forward to discussing your comments, suggestions, or hearing any ideas for future article topics you may be interested in regarding business cards design or business
card management.

Building An Iconic Web Brand

By Jerry Bader in Featured

Do you have an obligation to be good, and by good, I mean good at your job? Do you have a responsibility not just to be professional and do what you do on time and on budget but also to be creative, thought provoking, and stimulating in the way that you do it?

Myth-Making as a Branding Strategy

The reason I ask the question is I recently read a comment on a business blog posted by a self-proclaimed advertising expert that justified the notion that schlock advertising works. I don’t know about you, but I find the idea disturbing. Sometimes ads work and sometimes they don’t. There are lots of reasons why advertising fails and in many cases it has more to do with implementation rather than conception. And yes we all know that schlock advertising like negative political ad campaigns work in the short-term, but ultimately the tactic leads to audience disillusionment and frustration, which is why we talk to our clients about marketing not advertising.

Marketing is About Building A Legend

Marketing requires you to take the long-view; it’s an approach that requires a company to stake out a position and build a personality that customers can rely on to be consistent and ethical both in offering and in execution. Marketing is about building a legend, an iconic brand that explains who you are, what you do, and why anyone should care. Marketing is about psychological persuasion in order to improve your audience’s businesses or personal lives. Marketing is about transformation, it communicates a brand story that acts as a metaphor that defines your identity, which in turn helps customers define and express themselves.

© Copyright 2012 All rights reserved. Jayde Online, Inc.

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