Telecom has a new logo to represent their business. In their latest newsletter it says:

…Right now changes are being made in every corner of Telecom from the ground up.

The new logo is a symbol of this change, an expression of possibilities. And if you’re thinking, “anyone could have drawn that”, great, we’ve achieved our aim. Because the new logo is whatever you want it to be. It’s an expression of the spirit, drive and deep passion that exists in each and every one of us.”
In Touch, November 2009

A logo is something that represents your business, and a brand is what your business is. The key driver to any brand is that it must stand for something. A point of difference, a value or a key driver in your business. Just as a wishy-washy business will never stand the test of time, a wishy-washy brand will suffer the same fate. Again – It must mean something.

The above excerpt from the Telecom New Zealand newsletter is a disclaimer. It says “well, we don’t really know what our logo means to us, so let’s just hope it means something to you”. Wow, if only the salesperson at the design agency worked for me, imagine what I could sell. Fridges to Eskimos, ashtrays on motorbikes… The reason this erks me is that this type of treatment to the industry, the snake oil salespeople of the graphic design and advertising world, is the epitome of what brand consultants, who want to see their client grow, no matter what their size and budget, is exactly the image that we work so hard to shake off.

One thing to bear in mind is that a large company has to answer to a board – which by it’s very nature stays safe and chooses the image that will do the least amount of harm – as a small business owner, don’t look at the big corporates and think that if that’s what big business does, you should follow suit. Changing the image of a large corporation is like turning a large ship. Remember, as a small business, with it’s finger on the pulse of your industry, you can be ‘braver’ than a large business, and it’s even more important, for you to ensure your brand means something to you. You can turn your business and brand much faster, and far more effectively. If your brand tries to please everyone, it will be remembered by no one. In ten years time we’ll be lamenting (if we’re really stuck for conversational topics) ‘what was that Telecom logo back in 2010?’

Their rationale is to save the planet from the evils of plastic landfill and it’s production. They are now charging around 5cents per bag to encourage us to become more frugal with our plastic bag usage. Profits of course go to charity.

This raises a few questions – firstly do we really feel warmer to our local supermarket because of their environmental conscious, or do we feel ripped off by their tact to charge us for what used to be a cost of goods sold by them (like the wages, rent and car parking spaces?) Remember the profit goes to charity, not the entire cost, so we are now paying for the cost of the bag.

If my bag tears and my groceries spill to the ground, since I’ve purchased the bag can I now get it, and my damaged groceries replaced, seeing as they sold me the item, and not gave it to me?

Pak ‘n’ Save, a low cost, pack your own groceries market, already charges for bags, but for the cost cutting reason, not the environmental one (that’s just an added bonus), as it’s in their brand promise.

If they are so worried about landfill, should they also encourage me to not grab the plastic bags in the vegetable department? Should they encourage their suppliers to use less fancy packaging?

Remember business owners, if you make a brand promise, in this example an environmental statement, it needs to flow through to every aspect of your business.

Maybe we should switch to paper bags…

“Wow that place is set up for a car yard, I could open one up. It’s the perfect place. I can see a car yard here”. That’s because you have seen a car yard there! Unfortunately that and running the idea past a friend or two is the only planning that’s been done. Then voila! The doors open, and it’s all great… until it fails. The problem is not finding out the facts. Why did the shop that went before you fail? This should be more than a 10 minute consideration, but the key consideration to deciding if it’s a plausible business venue or not.

I know you’ll tell me, you’ll do it better, newer, brighter and different, but how can you do it differently if you don’t have a measuring stick? You can’t do it better, if you don’t know what the ‘worse’ was. Find the old owners, or make the real estate agent give you a feasible report on the past business. This is your investment, so do whatever it takes to find out what really (honestly) happened to the other business. If you can’t find an answer, walk away. If the reason is so hard to nail down, or no one has bothered, then walk away.

Which leads to another point, if your sole inspiration to set up shop is the location, think again. Great businesses, fantastic restaurants, and profitable car sales yards don’t happen by accident. They see the need, create the business and then find the right place, not the reverse of this order.

Of course I don’t need to say, if it’s a large chain that has moved out: Starbucks; McDonald’s; Volvo; don’t think you can do the same thing better.

Which led us to a discussion about the conundrum of website dating (ie personal marketing). Do you dig out a photo from years past where you were (you believe) at your finest, in order to get the contacts, only to get belted at the end post when you meet face to face (what a let down!). Or do you use a nice but ‘honest’ photo so that when, and if, you meet there will be no surprises, and therefore no ill feelings at the first, and crucial, meet up?

Of course my answer is the latter of the two options. If you can present your personal brand honestly, and provide as much honest information about yourself (without painting a bulls eye on yourself for stalkers!) then those that do wish to meet you will be doing so well informed, and have already passed the first test of compatibility. hmm, a bit like clients really. Do you want 100 phone calls to find the 5 good clients, or do you get 10 phone calls for the same 5 clients? Seems to me that if you have 90 less people to screen through you’ll have more time to answer the the needs of the 5 new clients, than be waylaid wading through the surplus 90.

Back to the dating scene, we’re only looking for one great partner in the end aren’t we? (aren’t we?)

Imagine what you could achieve if you could commit to all tasks with this kind of drive. The types of people who consistently reach high levels in their life, whether it’s in business or a sporting success are described as having discipline and focus. Therefore we, the not-so-high achievers tell ourselves that because we’re not disciplined people we’ll just have to be happy with where we’re at.

Why do we lie to ourselves? Discipline and focus are only hard because of the things we have to say no to. But it’s what we say no to that helps us achieve our goals. So then, why do you not have a disciplined business? Because you are not saying ‘no’ enough! People are often afraid to tell a customer that you do not do everything because they fear they are saying no to business. Yes, you are saying no to a financial transaction, but what you need to realise is what is that transaction costing you? As a dieter says yes to a cream bun (well it was good for the moment) in the long term it’s not just going to cost them in extra calories, which have to be exercised off later, it’s also costing them in the form of a psychological setback. They have proven to themselves they really can’t do it and have sabotaged their eating plan. So, by saying ‘yes’ to that cash exchange, for something you don’t really do, you are sabotaging your long term brand (and business) plan. After all you’ve done it once, what’s to stop you from getting off track and finding more ’side-tracks’ to your business. The next thing you know you’ve got an unstreamlined, bulging at the seams company that does have some direction (after all we all know we want something better) but lacks the focus and discipline to get there.

There is a saying that success is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration, and that perspiration involves not saying yes every time you have a inspiration, if you don’t have the perspiration to back it up. Stay focussed and say no a few times, only you know what your business could look like with a bit more focus.

Then there is the other end of the scale, a big corporate like Cadbury decides to change the recipe of their core product to ‘improve it’. Knowing that change is a costly and daring undertaking, one would think they would arm themselves to the hilt with due diligence. The best example of changing a recipe of a core product is Cola Cola. As a totally reactive measure to the ‘Pepsi Taste Challenge’ the changed their recipe. Unfortunately they didn’t realise that though 9 out of 10 preferred the taste of Pepsi (or whatever the Pepsi-researched stats were) their consumers still went out and bought a Coke. This was met with great protest from Coca Cola fans (lesson one, don’t p*ss off your core followers to please the so-called masses) resulting in the Coke recipe being brought back, and the new recipe becoming New Coke.

Following Coke’s recipe changing disaster, which become the favourite story of branding gurus everywhere, surely Cadbury could have seen the writing on the wall should they decide to change their recipe ‘for the better’. Or do the big companies look at other large corporate failures and think they can do it better? Whatever the reasoning, Cadbury changed their recipe to contain less cocoa butter (what makes the chocolate, chocolate) and more palm oil, to stop it melting as quickly. Bundled with this they changed the look of the chocolate (wider, flatter squares), the wrapper (now cardboard, no more satisfying slicing open the foil with your thumb nail, now it’s like opening a box of anything other than chocolate) and it’s now a smaller size!

Surely changing the recipe to one that is less inclined to melt in transit is a lot harder than changing your supply system? Or if it is easier, you’re now asking the consumer to swallow (ha ha) the change, the one that really matters in the transaction.

This story has ended with Cadbury reverting to it’s original recipe, and doing a lot of brand repair. Though when I think about it, the other changes have not made as much as a stir with consumers. Which leads me to think that maybe Cadbury has had a slight of hand and distracted it’s consumers with the recipe fiasco in order to have these other changes go unnoticed (remember people, they now have smaller blocks, which is harder to spot with a change in the visual presentation of the way it’s pressed into pieces). If we’d noticed the price go up, rather than the size go down, hard times may tempt us to choose an alternative to our Cadbury choc fix.

But that’s ok, because we, the people, were heard, and changes were made…

What seems like a harmless, ‘close enough’ solution to a domain name (and email!) could be doing you more harm than good. Why:

It’s just one more thing to remember
If you’re advertising is so compelling that you manage to actually get someone to go and look your company up on the ‘net, they have to remember your name in order to land on your website. But with a .net they also have to remember the suffix, smacking of ‘too hardness’.

You’ve settled for second best
Let’s face it .net-ers. Someone beat you to the punch and got your domain name first. Try creating either a local address such as .co.nz and if that’s gone reconsider the way you could write your name, or tie a clever domain name into your marketing plan. www.freestuff.co.nz is a compelling web address to market, for example. (some one’s getting a free plug – just to prove my point!)

These names can only be topped as settling for second by those that use a commercial hosting plan as their email address. You know who you are, bob.smith@xtra.co.nz or joe.bloggs@paradise.net.nz and of course jane.jones@gmail.com

Domain names cost next to nothing to register, and emails using domain names (the ‘@xxxx.com’ part of your address) is also free with the arrival of Google Apps and the like, so to settle for a second tiered domain or email name if you’re in business either highlights your lack of knowledge of the Internet or shows you’re happy to settle.

The typical process of working with a design company goes like this:

1. You tell them what you want to achieve (more sales)
2. Based on their brief, and budget, the agency goes away and develops it’s recommended plan for achieving your goals
3. Agency presents one to three options for your company and the reasons for doing so, based again on what you’ve asked for
4. Agency completes project and you go about reaping increased sales benefits

Unfortunately the world doesn’t work like this anymore. This model for dealing with a creative is based on the premise that you know what your customers want. It also operates under the assumption that you can adequately communicate the whole gamat of your company to an external company in the first place.

Based on the above process, you will get no surprises as to what the message is, and who you will attract (or bore to tears). Nice, safe and predictable. Sure, the presentation of your advertising will differ between agencies, but the core message will not cause you to raise an eyebrow.

So if it’s not going to raise your eyebrows, no matter how clever the presentation, what chance do you have of getting the attention of your customers?

What if, your advertising message was to come from within your company? What if the way you worked with the agency was no longer a ‘them and us’ scenario, but a collaboration, where both parties challenged each other for a better outcome. For a different outcome? An outside perspective is an asset to have – but will always be based on what you give them. If your agency was to sit on the inside looking out, and you were to bare the soul of your business, what gems might you find? You may be sitting on a goldmine, and not know it because you’ve had no help to dig a little deeper.

Sure, you may not get the predictable, and ’safe’ outcome and reassurances that a design or advertising agency can paint for you, but if you really want to step it up and be somewhere different (and better), consider baring all to your trusted brand adviser and set in place a collaborative plan that will deliver you where you want to be, and not just where you’ve always been.

You’ve spent thousands of dollars, and thousands of man hours creating a product or service, and you don’t even consider how it will look? How will it feel when the consumer holds it, that’s if you can prompt the shopper to pick up the product off the shelf in the first place! It’s funny really, the reason you pick up a product and wish to part with your hard earned cash is that a product speaks to you, or at very least it looks professional. Would a iPod have been as popular, and created a whole new industry, if it had looked like a little beige box? After all, it still does the same thing?

The way your business looks, or the way your services and products look is important. It’s not about designing something that will lead the way and influence the next wave, or create a new genre (though, that would be fantastic if you were brave enough to do so), but about caring how your business looks. By telling yourself you can’t afford to create a professionally designed brand, or product package, you’re saying your product is of not enough value to warrant a professional image. To a prospective consumer, your product may be the best widget in the world, but if no one wants to pick it up and pay money for it, if it doesn’t look like a proper product, you’re going to go broke.

Imagine if, in comparison, you worked with a designer, while creating your product or service, and could intertwine the form with the function, what level of product would you come out with? By working these two often polarised aspects to business development, the design will also start to have function, in the same way as your products features work to make your product what it is. Design is not an add-on, but an integral part of selling your product’s value to consumers, and if you tell yourself you can’t afford design, can you really afford to produce your product and service in the first place? If your design says you don’t care about your business, why should your customer?

“Should a smack as part of good parental correction be a criminal offence in New Zealand?”

That’s it. No punctuation, no option, either you agree with the statement or you don’t! It’s interesting that the process in which the anti-smacking bill came about was as bias as this (it got snuck through virtually overnight), so you’ve got to see the humour in this perceived swing in position! But is it a swing in opinion, or just laziness in the form of a poorly written question? Our government has spent a lot of money promoting this referendum, surely they could afford a copy writer to ensure the question made sense?

This one line incorporates a couple of questions, so what one are we answering?

“Is a smack part of good parental correction?”
“Should a smack be a criminal offence?” or,
“Should we be arrested if it is deemed bad parental correction?”

To go further, (because I can) – does a smack really correct the parents?

So if a big agency can make this error, what about the small business? With all the expense and time you put into your campaigns, have you stopped to check your headlines? I’m sure you know what you meant when you write them, just as I’m sure the organisers know what they meant when they wrote this referendum question, but it’s not them that make the vote. If they’d passed this by the person in the street to read first, I’m sure they would not be coming under as much fire, and we could focus on the view, not the literature.