BrandingFire Blog

I was waiting for my sandwich at Which Wich today and perusing their wall of bag art. If you’re not familiar with the place, Which Wich is a great sandwich restaurant. You order your sandwich by filling out a form on a bag using their red markers (go with it, it’s fun) and you receive your finished sandwich in the same bag. Some people have taken to writing comments and even drawings on the bags (in red marker) and leaving them behind at the restaurant for the staff. Impromptu comment cards, if you will. Some of the drawings are really, really good.

It’s cool that their customers are such big fans that they’re willing to do these comment bags. Are you customers that enthusiastic about your product? Have you ever received feedback in cool or unexpected ways like this? Tell us about it.

I was very fortunate to have been involved with the Internet very early. I have a natural enthusiasm for technology. As my parents used to say, “He likes anything that makes noise, lights up and has buttons.” So I was pretty well at home on the web by the time most people started investigating it. One of the questions I was asked frequently from business people was, “Do you think I should have a website?” My answer was always, “Yes. Yes! YES!” I foresaw the trend of people using the Internet rather than the phone book or catalog when they needed to find a business or product.

Now, it feels like that period all over again as people are asking, “Should I have a blog/podcast/Twitter account, Jaiku account, mySpace page, Facebook account/etc.?” My answer is a resounding, “Maybe….”

If your do it for the right reasons and go in with a clear understanding of what’s required, go for it! If you think you need one because everyone seems to be doing it, or you don’t know that this will take time and effort – and lots of it – forget it. Unlike the old websites that could be thrown up on the Internet and left alone, today’s web applications (including websites) require you to invest work, time and money…continually.

Before you put those branding irons in the fire, answer these questions:

• What are my goals for this blog/podcast/Twitter account, Jaiku account, mySpace page, Facebook account/etc.?
• Do I have enough time to invest in blog posts, Twittering, recording and editing podcasts? (If you answer, “Sure, I’m going to have the PR or Marketing Person do it for me, we have a whole new set of issues to discuss.)
• Do I have enough to say? (It’s easy to post to your blog the first day or record your first podcast. What about a year or two down the road?)
• Do I have anything interesting to say?
• Am I willing to expose my product/company/service to the criticism that might come from this added exposure? How “out there” do I want to be?
• Should I have restrictions on what I talk about (business only, personal issues, funny stories, links to other interesting stuff, links to goofy stuff)?
• How long and I willing to give this before I expect a measurable “payoff”?

Engaging people with these new tools can be very rewarding. You just need to be prepared and educated before you get those irons glowing red hot and realize you’re not prepared to brand the cattle.

Growing up I remember my father telling me that it was OK to make mistakes as long as I learned from them. But in the process of growing up I learned to be risk averse. It was easier to do what I knew was safe than to take a chance on failing. Failure is at best embarrassing and at worst painful.

Luckily, a few years ago a mentor drove it into my head that failure is not just an option, it is required to work for him (which I did). We’re human and we’re going to make mistakes if we’re doing anything at all. If you’re not making mistakes, you’re not really doing anything. And if you try things that are out of the ordinary or push the edges, you’re going to fail…big time. The key, as both this mentor and my father taught me, is for your failures to be non-fatal and that you learn from them so you don’t repeat them.

Just remember, you’re more likely to stumble and fall if you’re running toward something than if you’re sitting in one spot. You’re also more likely to actually get somewhere.

Do you encourage your team (or yourself) to accept failure?

It’s not new, but it’s an interesting and creative use of type. BBDO (an ad agency) in London designed this coaster for Guinness. (If you don’t see anything special, look at the bottom portion of the beer glass. You can click on the picture to see a larger version that is easier to read.) Sometimes, just a bit of creativity can make a thing remarkable.

I’m surprised I haven’t seen anyone selling something like this.

 

According to an AAM 2006 study, median annual attendance for different types of museums is as follows:

• Arboretum/Botanic Garden   106,235
• Art Museum                          59,822
• Children’s/Youth Museum       78,500
• General Museum                   43,500
• Historic House/Site                16,000
• History Museum                    10,750
• Natural History/Anthropology  62,803
• Nature Center                       52,850
• Science/Technology Museum 244,589
• Specialized Museum               20,000
• Zoo                                     440,502

Notice the bottom of the food chain is History Museum & Historic House/Site. We have our work cut out for us!

According to the American Association of Museums (AAM), there are an estimated 17,500 museums (of all types) in the U.S. The AAM says they only know of two attempts to count U.S. museums and this number is from the most recent.

The AAM membership directory lists 389 historic home/site members.The directory lists 1,254 history museum members. It is unknown how many, if any, of those may be duplicated in both lists.

Paul Williams over at Idea Sandbox posts these great Cocktail Napkin Wisdom images. , along with the two pennies, may be worth more than your whole week’s salary!

If you aren’t familiar with Paul, you should check out his blog. He’s very creative a great read.

I had a guy tell me he didn’t have time for all of this “marketing and internet stuff” and asked if I couldn’t just sum up the whole shebang in one sentence. Uh, no. Not really. But since he wanted one special nugget of information to take away with him, I boiled everything down to this simple idea:“It’s not about you. It’s about them.”

It’s an irony of marketing that when you’re trying to tell people about your product, you can’t make it all about you. You have to make it all about them. They don’t care about you or your product. (Sorry to be so blunt, but this is supposed to be brief.) They only care how your product solves a problem for them. People don’t buy from Dell, Apple, Southwest Airlines or Coke because their products or services offer lots of great features. They buy because the product feeds their need for higher self-esteem, being a part of the “in” crowd, saves them money, saves their personal photos, or a thousand other needs (or perceived needs) that people have.

If you want people to visit your history house, museum or buy your history book, don’t make your pitch all about what a great product you have. Make your pitch about how your remarkable product solves relieves some pain they have.

I never intended for my first post on the BrandingFire blog to be of a political nature. But Seth Godin, whose work and ideas I admire greatly, posted something on his blog today for which I just had to add to the conversation. In this post, Thinking About This War, Seth says that one of the greatest weapons we have in a post-9/11 world is good marketing. I’ve thought for more than 10 years that a good marketing campaign can be as effective (though not always as fast) as a strong army for implementing regime and policy change around the world. But what really got me was where Seth said government frequently prefers enforcement to changing people’s behavior with good marketing.

Take, for instance, my home town of Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Government and citizens will sometimes get cross-wise from each other. That’s to be expected. But when government continually goes against the public grain, that’s the sign of a problem. Three examples from Murfreesboro are:

1. Annexation - The city has been annexing stray areas of county land in order to consolidate the city limits. However, they’ve been doing it against a citizenry that STRONGLY doesn’t want to be annexed. The Planning Commission and City Council have held meeting after meeting to listen to angry county residents who do not want to be annexed. Then, they went ahead and annexed the areas anyway. When persuasion didn’t work fast enough for them, they chose enforcement. Now the city is having to spend precious money to fend off two (so far) lawsuits from angry residents.
2. The city has forced one business (a gas station/convenience store) to remove an electronic sign and has tried to force Lamar Outdoor Advertising to remove a digital billboard. The city has an embargo against electronic signs, but in both of these cases, they had approved the signs that were put up. Now, they’re forcing these businesses to foot the bill for removing the signs. Once again, the city chose enforcement over persuasion (and reason). Once again, the city is being sued and has to spend even more precious revenue to fight off a lawsuit.
3. Recently, a local car wash was forced by city officials to remove a U.S. flag they were flying. It seems the flag violated the city’s ordinance on how large a flag could be. Apparently, the car was owners were too patriotic. Again, the city chose enforcement. It was only under massive outrage by citizens and a small protest at the car was site that commission members hastily amended the flag ordinance to allow the flag.

In all of these cases, the city has handled the PR on these issues terribly. Instead of helping citizens to understand the issues (or rescind the rules if they were just nonsense), the city has chosen to stubbornly stand their ground and use enforcement instead. And they’re losing in the battle for the public’s hearts and minds. Losing badly. Sometimes, being right isn’t enough. You need to appear to be right. In marketing, perception is frequently truth.

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