RSS
Why your “good” isn’t necessarily my “good”… and why it matters
People who start, or work actively for nonprofits tend to have one major thing in common: they want to do some “good”.
That “good” could be anything from rescuing neglected dogs, to helping older people find a safe place for their final years, to digging wells in Malawi, to bringing children to museums, to funding cancer research… but the sentiment is similar at the core. You wouldn’t work to make a difference unless you thought a difference could be made… and not just a difference, but an improvement. That conviction is key to making your investment make sense.
The hardest thing to learn about our convictions, however, is that not everyone shares them — not for the same cause, not for the same reason, not for the same result, and often not enough to do anything about it. And when your heart is deeply invested, it can feel almost offensive when someone else doesn’t see the value.
But it’s not necessarily that they’re being cold or callous.
They’re just not invested in your “good”.
This is where things start to fall apart for many nonprofits:
The assumption that your “good” is, or should be the same good that matters to others.
The assumption that telling the story should do all the work of engaging.
The assumption that the ask should be irresistible because the cause is irresistible.
The assumption that everyone else should care.
Our backgrounds, cultures, priorities, and passions create a unique map in our minds and hearts. What resonates with us has a long journey to get all the way to our emotional core, through biases, beliefs, and sometimes, fear: the fear that we’re investing in the wrong thing, or that what seems compelling right now won’t always matter. Which is why the notion of “good” often fails to go the distance.
The most unsuccessful nonprofits are just as convinced as the successful ones that they’re pursuing an important vision. They dream of solving problems, of helping, of changing things, of moving forward.. all beneficial results. But unlike organizations that make an impact, they assume their passion should guarantee support.
Certainly, there will be donors and supporters who see a light in your eye… and they will invest in that glimmer.
The vast majority, however, need something more.
And frankly, there’s nothing wrong with that. Even if it seems like the existence of a problem should be enough reason to care about the solution, it’s impossible to solve all the problems we see. We have to prioritize where we put our energy, or we’ll never move the needle on anything worthwhile. And those choices often come down to a sense of connection to what an organization does.
Which is why you need to learn about your constituents before you can reach them.
Is there something you do that overlaps with something they already care about?
Can you tell a story they recognize themselves in, or perhaps someone they love?
Is there a simple, practical way they can help — help they might not know you need?
Is there a difficulty they experienced that you’re working to prevent?
Is there an aspect of who you are that isn’t immediately obvious, but would radically change the way they saw you?
How might your brand halo add more shine to theirs?
There’s a lot of resistance to this “ways in” approach among some of the most dedicated people who work for causes, because they see it as an inferior point of connection to altruism. You should want to help. You should see the value intrinsically. You should know it matters. You should take my word for it.
You have to invest deeply to do the job well. And being “all in”? It changes your filters.
But hanging on to the value of your “good” — over the possibilities inherent in developing a whole range of “goods” — won’t advance your mission. And if you’re not advancing your mission, are you really doing the most… good?
Your value isn’t one-note. Your constituents aren’t one-note. Your possibilities aren’t one-note. So why is your call to action?
Maybe it’s time to learn a new tune.
Categories: Nonprofits, Strategy and Management
JC Penney and the power of brand synecdoche
The branding world has been buzzing lately with commentary on the rollout of JCPenney’s new logo.
At Sametz Blackstone, we’ve been excited to see a brand employing the concept of synecdoche* in this new mark: using a part to represent the whole. It’s a design that is fresh, punchy, and a little edgy; a bold move that works effectively to turn around the retailer’s previously stodgy reputation.
My high school did something similar a few years ago. Miss Porter’s School is an all-girls boarding and day school in Farmington, CT. Aware of a misperception that it was still a 1950’s-style “finishing school,” MPS leveraged the concept of synecdoche and entirely dropped the “Miss” and the “School” from their mark. (Insider’s note: “Porter’s” is what alumnae of my era call Miss Porter’s, while “Farmington” is how older generations refer to the school.)
While the name is still formally “Miss Porter’s School”—and that phrase appears somewhere on all materials, both print and digital—the new mark is an effective, high impact vehicle for communicating the character of the school today, while still recognizing a strong sense of place and history.
One final example (though very recently rendered obsolete): the Toronto Blue Jays former logo. A new version was unveiled in 2011, which incorporates the team’s full name, but the last incarnation (the second below) was a fun and evocative mark for the “Jays.” While the new logo has been hailed as a design success, the old edition was perfectly—and pithily—on point… thanks to synecdoche.
*Synecdoche: a figure of speech by which a part is put for the whole (as fifty sail for fifty ships), the whole for a part (as society for high society), the species for the genus (as cutthroat for assassin), the genus for the species (as a creature for a man), or the name of the material for the thing made (as boards for stage). -Merriam-Webster Dictionary
Categories: Branding, Design, Strategy and Management
A year’s worth of favorites
2011 was a tremendously busy year at Sametz Blackstone — and 2012 is shaping up to be another year of compelling projects, fantastic clients, and much time spent exploring opportunities and tackling challenges as a team. We’re thrilled to be embarking on some new collaborations, and to have some fresh projects ramping up with old friends.
This is a tremendously exciting time to be doing what we do: never before has there been such a diverse range of communication tools and venues available to help organizations tell their stories, and build a “mosaic brand.”
Blog posts around New Year’s often focus on reflections on the year behind us, or predictions for the year ahead. We’re going to land somewhere in the middle, and share a few favorite posts from our blog over the last 12 months. Technically, that’s reflective, I suppose — but some of them had predictions, too!
We’ll be sharing more of our thinking in the months ahead, and celebrating some great achievements by our friends and partners.
Stay tuned.. and the very happiest of New Year’s to you and yours.
Our New Year’s video from last year — a labor of love
What happens when great design and great music come together
A favorite identity from the past year — and a project we’re proud to be a part of
Everyone gets a turn with the markers and whiteboard around here
“Adopsters”… the hipsters of social media
Sametz Blackstone 101: so is it an actual “cup of tea”, or?
Director of Design, Joerg, looks back in time… and finds that it flies
A can by any other color would not taste as sweet?
Thanks for coming by today — and join us for more in 2012!
Categories: Branding, Design, Digital Media, Nonprofits, Outside the Square, Strategy and Management
Sametz Blackstone 101
Sametz Blackstone Associates is like nowhere I’ve ever worked before. With only 17 people (and two dogs) on staff, there’s really nowhere to hide the fact that you’re the new girl in Blackstone Square.
Luckily, in addition to being an incredibly smart group of people, the Sametz Blackstone team is extraordinarily welcoming, patient, and kind. Over the last six weeks they have taught me far more than I would ever learn in a semester’s worth of classes on branding, marketing, and communications—with a sprinkling of design on top.
Part of my learning curve has been understanding the way of talking about branding unique to Sametz Blackstone. The following is a cheat sheet to a few of my favorite phrases heard often in the office:
“First handshake”: Your first impression of a brand. What is the look / feel / emotional affect of this brand?
“Messages have to live somewhere”: Branding messages aren’t just words that exist in a vacuum. How those messages are brought to life in printed materials or on a website is inextricably tied to design. You could have the most compelling brand message in the world, but if your fonts, imagery, and colors are inconsistent across different messaging vehicles, your brand will still not pack its maximum punch.
“Cups of Tea”: Qualitative research is a key tool to be used in understanding and articulating a meaningful, authentic brand message. Having metaphorical—or real!—cups of tea with different constituents across a brand (the brand managers, the brand users, etc.) is at the heart of what SBA does to really get to know a brand from the inside out and communicate its value most effectively.
“Ways In”: Different audiences connect with the same brand differently. An individual donor interested in educational policy issues shouldn’t be spoken to in the same way as the corporate foundation who needs to fulfill both a philanthropic and a marketing goal. Understand the different ways into your brand—and the brand values that resonate most closely with diverse key constituent groups—allows an organization to nimbly shift its messaging accordingly.
“Mosaic branding”: Fundamental to Sametz Blackstone’s work is the view that a brand is like a mosaic. It’s made up of pieces that we can control (for example, the words, fonts, and colors we use) and that we can’t control (your consumers’ conversations), which all come together to communicate the meaning integral to the dynamic organism that is a brand.
Casually drop one of these phrases into conversation at Sametz Blackstone and you’re sure to sound like an old pro.
Now, if only I could really become an old pro at the office’s archaic and rather terrifying phone system…
Categories: Branding, Strategy and Management
Thanks, Mr. Jobs.
Sametz Blackstone Associates is a 100% Apple shop.
We work each day on everything from MacBook Airs to mighty iMacs (with a couple iPads thrown in for good measure.) When we have a meeting, the only thing more plentiful than Flour Bakery cookies on our conference table are the ubiquitous glowing apples on the backside of our (11″ to 17″) screens.
This is due in part to our heritage as a graphic design studio — since Macs have long been popular with those who design for print, digital, and web — and in part to our current status as a bunch of raving product design and gadget junkies.
Out of our current staff of 15, 9 of us are iPhone owners. 4 of us are iPad owners. At least 2 or 3 of us are glued to the liveblogs of Apple product launches when they happen. And one of us has a full color wardrobe of cases for all her beloved gadgets (I have no idea who that might be.)
When I learned that visionary and Apple founder Steve Jobs had passed away yesterday (via a text from my Dad in Vancouver — his iPhone to my iPhone), I was standing in Whole Foods near my fellow Sametzian, Michael, who immediately fired up his Twitter app to see the news. I was struck by how sad I was — after all, I’d never met Mr. Jobs. But when I realized just how much of my life is touched by things he either created, helped develop, or launched, it seemed less surprising.
In fact, I posted this last night:
I have friends from dozens of cities, all sorts of generations, all sorts of backgrounds, and the only thing I’ve seen more of them mention than not on social platforms is the passing of Steve Jobs.
Reacting to a death outside of our friends or family always seems strange, like we’re co-opting something that we don’t quite have a right to feel. Especially when it’s related to something some of us already have an uneasy relationship with: technology.
But it’s powerful to see how many of us recognize vision, creativity, and passion as something to be cherished — and something worthy of a real goodbye.
So, from our iOrchard to yours, Cupertino, we send our thoughts and deep appreciation for a life lived the way we hope to each day: with big ideas, big goals, and the desire to create things that people love and take pride in.
Thank you, Steve Jobs, for making our little world a better place.
Categories: Digital Media, Strategy and Management
“Adopsters”… or the anti-social side of the social web
It started as a throwaway line in a post on Google Plus (adopter + hipster = adopster), and then became a tweet:
And lo, mere moments later, I realized that tweet was traveling far and wide:
That’s when I knew I’d probably hit some sort of nerve. (I got re-tweeted by a muskox!)
And, truth be told, I was pointing a finger at myself as much as anyone else.
I’ve been an “early adopter” of a number of social media platforms over the past several years — usually via invitations from friends who are REAL early adopters: the kinds of folks who know start-up founders or have start-ups themselves, or who happen to run in tech-savvy circles where everything is in beta (including the fish.)
Maybe that makes me more of an early “hanger-on”… but regardless, I’ve been given access a time or two.
When platforms are solely populated by early adopters, a lot of the conversation surrounds how the platform is functioning, how we should / could be using it, where it could be improved, and which existing platform it will “kill” when everyone can sign up.
I’m not an entrepreneur or a developer or a venture capitalist, so my contribution to those conversations is usually pretty limited. I tend to do what I do with my personal accounts on all social platforms regardless of how new they are, or who else might be there (share random links, rhapsodize about the bottle of moisturizer I just bought, talk about recipes and dinner menus, poke fun at my friends, fling non-sequiturs into the ether…)
In some sense, I’m probably actually doing most of the things that bug the early adopters when a platform is open to the public — just a few months early. And I know those things bug them because they make no bones about expressing disdain when their private club has their virtual doors opened to digital “riff raff.”
Or, you know… everyone else.
I saw it with various blogging platforms.
I saw it with podcasting (though that’s less a platform issue than a technology that become easier to use with certain platforms.)
I saw it with Facebook.
I saw it with Twitter.
And I have to admit — I was one of those people with Twitter. When we were just a few hundred thousand folks hanging out in a 140-character cocktail party, it was easy to have conversations about things I enjoyed without getting followed by a bot replying to all tweets mentioning the word “furry”.
Then came the spam. Then came the internet marketers. Then came the sparkly MySpacers. Then came the self-help people with bushels of inspirational quotes. Then came the relatives who didn’t quite get how things worked, but tweeted thoughts at me that were better suited for email. And I can’t forget how hard I shook my fist when Oprah platituded her way to a zillion followers.
But as soon as I realized how insular I sounded (“Email was SO much better when only six of us had it”), I cut it out. Because everything evolves over time, and opening up a platform shows what it is really capable of doing (see: national revolutions, emergency news distribution, health support networks, citizen journalism, live-tweeting the Oscars… okay, maybe not that last one…)
Now I’m seeing a number of folks who’ve been futzing around with Google Plus expressing irritation at how their channels are changing, now that the doors are wide open.
They rail at the rise in “spam” (some of which is actual spam, but some of which is just content they’re not interested in), they sigh at random comments that derail conversations on their posts (“Why is my uncle talking about Sarah Palin on a post about access to APIs?”)… and ultimately have embarked on an ardent search for their next treehouse.
I can take this from true nerds who still pine for old IRC channels (you’ve never made any bones about being truly “social”), but since many early adopters nowadays are social strategists, integrated marketers, community managers on other platforms, and the like, it seems absurd to pine for the days when the only people they had to talk to were… social strategists, integrated marketers, community managers on other platforms, and the like.
Yes, I know it’s more fun in the back room of the store, where you can complain about the crazy lady who tried on 14 red dresses before stating that “red has never been my color.”
Yes, I know it’s more fun to talk about potential ways you could use a tool than to have to actually USE the tool to talk to someone who uses your products, or wants to know more about your initiative, or needs you to use plain language to help them work something out.
Yes, I know that not everyone is as supportive as your five friends who comment on every post you make, and re-share every link you post with the world.
Yes, I know it feels like they’re “doing it wrong” (sure, there are best practices, but they’re not best laws.)
But.
You can’t…
- tell businesses that they “can’t afford NOT to be social”,
- tell conference goers in a 40-slide deck that there are “endless opportunities”
- tell everyone in a book that anyone can use these channels, even “dummies”!
- tell your friends and family they can get better customer service through social media,
- tell nonprofits that they’re going to have more access than ever to their communities and constituents,
- tell reporters that want to quote you about how social media is changing everything from government to education to art…
… UNLESS you’re genuinely excited when everybody gets a chance to use them.
Even if it’s not that fun at first.
After all… home runs are rare in inside baseball.
Categories: Digital Media, Strategy and Management
Resident Canadian defends metric system… story at 11
Earlier this week, I had the opportunity to guest post at the Radian6 blog on the topic of measurement in social media.
Here’s a quick excerpt:
“There are two sides to the power of measurement for achieving social media success: first, the way it helps you track, tweak, and re-jig your social efforts to ensure you’re meeting goals. It’s up to you to define what success looks like, and what your goals are, but by actually paying attention, you’re already headed in the right direction.”
You can find the whole post here.
Thanks so much, Radian6 team, for the opportunity to share my thoughts on strategies for tracking social engagement… and for giving me a chance to rant about the Metric system.
And feel free to share your thoughts here or there about social measurement — even any questions you might have. We’d love to help out!
Categories: Digital Media, Outside the Square, Strategy and Management
Small team… big ideas. Come be a part of it!
One of the most interesting things about working at a “small shop” is that everyone tends to have a range of responsibilities and interests that extend past their job description. If you’re good at something, you’ll likely get a chance to do it.
This also tends to come up in how we hire new team members: we look for people who have diverse experience and interests, who show initiative in making things happen (even if it’s a little outside the parameters of their role), and who value collaboration in all things.
Everyone has a voice, so we want to make sure we bring in people who have good ideas—and who listen (and get excited) when other people come up with them, too.
Right now, we’re in the midst of hiring two key positions to fill out our team: a Brand Strategist, and a Designer.
In the time since we’ve been on the hunt, we’ve learned a few things (well, we kind of already knew…):
- Most people are used to a certain kind of hierarchy when it comes to creating communications for clients: the client wants something, the strategist comes up with something that something should say and an idea of how it could look, and the designer takes the creative brief and makes it happen. Lather, rinse, repeat.
- The idea of “brand” is one that has taken a big hit as of lately, what with the notion of “personal brand” running rampant through social media, and the reality that many people think of a logo and a color scheme as “branding” (which leaves out the meaning side of things: a brand’s foundation, positioning, messages, etc. )
- We’re a bit different.
(And that’s not a bad thing. In fact, it’s why we’ve been around for 32 years.)
We’re “system thinkers”: we make sure everything we create—from top to bottom web projects for financial companies, to postcards targeting potential applicants of a summer high school program—strengthens our clients’ brands. If the visual elements don’t jive with their other communications… if the message doesn’t ring true to the organization and their goals… if you can’t point to where it “moves the needle”… well, we’re wasting an opportunity.
To us, a “brand” isn’t a logo or a tagline or an eye-catching color you choose. A brand lives in the hearts and minds of an organization’s constituents: it hinges on how people perceive them and what they do, both in the context of the communications they create, and what others are saying (in the press, via social media, through word of mouth… and beyond.)
And no matter how big or small an organization might be, they are only so much in control of their brand—which means that at the moments when they are in control, they need to do a great job of sharing who they are.
That’s where we come in…
Designer
We’re seeking a Designer who makes beautiful things—beautiful things that do what they’re meant to do, within functional, smart, compelling systems. You will work on a wide range of projects—across an equally wide range of clients, both for- and nonprofit—in print and electronic formats, from worldwide brand identity systems to multi-year capital campaigns. Versatility is a must (if you couldn’t tell already!)
If you:
- do exceptional work on projects large and small, and across media
- work and communicate well with clients, and can articulate the thinking behind what you create
- make “problem solving” a priority in meeting the needs of organizations
- have a passion for innovative, progressive design
- have experience in both print and digital media
- are typographically savvy
- can multitask like a pro—without missing details or dropping the ball on communicating
- enjoy a collaborative environment, both as part of a deeply creative design community, and as part of a focused client team…
… then we’d love to talk to you. Scroll down to learn how to get in touch!
Brand strategist
We’re seeking a Brand Strategist who sees both the forest and the trees: you understand how brands are created, maintained, and loved, and how every aspect of an organization’s communications can reflect and strengthen that brand. You’ve ideally worked with both for- and nonprofit organizations (because we do!), and see each one of your clients as a unique, complex entity with their own needs and goals. In fact, you’ve thrown out all your cookie cutters… because you haven’t used them in years.
This isn’t an “account exec” position or a “brand manager” position or a “project manager” position, though all of those things are wrapped in to what you’ll do with our team.
If you:
- see “brand” as a never-static, living, breathing thing
- believe that stories are important
- can capably research (both qualitative and quantitative—stats AND in-depth conversations), envision, and implement brand-focused strategies
- love to dig into a new industry to learn all you can in a short space of time
- can articulate, write, and present in a compelling way
- can lead multiple client teams simultaneously, with efficiency and respect
- are conversant with both traditional and new media
- collaborate with designers, writers, and developers with respect and open ears
- manage and grow healthy, productive client relationships, and
- want to help find and realize new opportunities
… we’d love to talk to you. Our ideal candidate has 5+ years experience in and around branding, business and communication strategy, marketing, and website development. Experience in nonprofit marketing and fundraising wouldn’t hurt, either.
Ready to join us? We’d love to meet you—and we think we’re pretty fun to work with, too.
Please send your resume (directed clearly to one of the positions above) and some words about who you are and why you’re interested in being a part of our team to Human Resources, Sametz Blackstone Associates, 40 West Newton Street, Boston, Massachusetts 02118. You can also email hrATsametzDOTcom (no phone calls, please!)
Categories: Branding, Design, Digital Media, Nonprofits, Strategy and Management
Twitter
LinkedIn