RSS
Digital Friday: John Keats Edition
Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
Before I came to Sametz Blackstone, I worked with a number of clients writing copy for their websites. I love writing dearly, but this particular genre offered a unique set of challenges.
If you’ve ever written copy for someone’s website, you already know that the copywriting process can be one fraught with a bit of peril: space restrictions, font restrictions, content confusion, and the endless chain of needs / wants that come from different quarters of an organization.
If you’re not on top of the whole storm of input, you can end up cobbling your final product from a series of late-night emails and last-minute, “Hail Mary” revisions.
Sometimes it’s not like that at all, mind you… but far too often, there’s a bit (or many hours) of darkness before the dawn.
From what I understand, the process for designers and web developers is remarkably similar — especially when you’re knee-deep in the kind of angst experienced by people who hire you to execute a vision they themselves don’t quite understand.
It all comes back that: when the purpose and message aren’t clear, nothing that follows will work — which is why so many websites fail to communicate / inform / engage / compel / function in the ways their creators intend.
But when everything comes together — when purpose, intention, visuals, voice, words, architecture, function and more work in perfect harmony with one another — a website can truly become “a thing of beauty.”
This is why, long before we arrive at site maps or images or copy, we guide our clients through the process of figuring out the messages they want to share with their different groups of constituents… and then we move to figuring how that message can best be communicated with all the resources in our design and digital toolboxes.
And things work out for the best.
So, on this fine Friday before a long Memorial Day weekend, I’m inviting you to share examples of great websites that make you want to keep coming back for more. Or, as Keats would say (and I’m paraphrasing here like mad), when a site is a “thing of beauty” and will bring its visitors “joy for ever” (or at least until the next revision.)
Share — and be sure to tell us what you love about it, and why.
Categories: Design, Outside the Square
Why choose one designer or method over another? And what about that crowdsourcing thing?
A couple weeks ago, Chris Brogan put together a post on crowdsourcing. What he didn’t realize — and what probably many more people don’t — is how controversial this topic can be among designers.
Many, many, many will tell you it’s practically a sin.
The truth is, if you’re looking for a logo, website, or any other sort of design, and you don’t have the cash flow to spend $20K, or you lack a general sort of know-how for finding designers, why wouldn’t you opt for 200 options for less than $400?
As with every dilemma, you’ve got stuff in both the good and bad columns.
Crowdsourcing “pros”:
- Many, many options
- Inexpensive
- Wide range of creativity / concepts
Crowdsourcing “cons”:
- No one-on-one concept discussion / development
- Possible lack of experience / talent based on the type of designers involved
- Loss of ability to take advantage of the designer’s own expertise / thought leadership / perspective by working closely with them
- Less chance of ongoing collaboration with the designer, due to a lack of connectivity and relationship
- Zero forward thinking—for instance, how will your choice of logo inform your brand?
- Lack of true or thorough organizational understanding from the designer
Obviously, you can figure out our perspective on crowdsourcing from this short list. There are a lot of benefits that get left behind in the process. But thinking through our perspective got me to thinking even more.
And here was the question at the top of my mind: aside from financial concerns, how does / should an individual / organization actually go about selecting a designer?
Because I’m a designer myself, I’ll likely never have to work out this challenge. If I don’t want to design something, I know countless designers… and they know designers, and they know (still more!) designers. What about the folks who don’t have a designer or design firm of choice in their life?
Like Chris said in his post, “But, I wouldn’t have known who stresslimit was, if it weren’t for Julien. And I wouldn’t have been that into the process, had I not had someone to hold my hand and explain why I wanted this, and not just something whipped up in Photoshop Elements.”
There are lots of options for anyone who wants design work done… crowdsourcing being one of them. You can read about Mr. Brogan’s experience with crowdsourcing here. Or you can read about the really terrible experience Cadbury had with crowdsourcing (and much more on the topic) here.
But there are also freelancers, boutique firms like our own Sametz, large advertising firms, etc. And of course we all specialize in very different things.
So how do you choose the right fit for your needs?
First, remember: design is a lot more than visual execution.
All “graphic design” is based on visual communication, and requires some amount of problem solving—either by you, your designer / firm, or both.
Perhaps think about the following:
Don’t base your selection entirely on portfolio quality: You may get the Sistine Chapel—but what if you asked for “Composition with Red, Yellow and Blue”?
Ask for references: If you ask around about the reliability / integrity of potential mechanics when your car breaks down, your hunt for a designer should be just as thorough.
Ask yourself if you want a thinker — or a short order cook: Thinkers will challenge you and challenge themselves. They’ll work hard to get you the right solution… but they may not deliver exactly, word for word, your requested solution. Obviously there are ups / downs to that kind of process.
Someone following your instructions to the letter won’t ask questions, or consider strategic opportunities. They will execute exactly what you ask for, without too much chatter.
Choose listening skills over design skills: Like I said earlier, you asked for “Composition in Red, Yellow and Blue”. Trust your instincts when you’re listening to a designer speak about their work. If they err too far on the side of “my ideas / creativity are more important than client needs”, run the other way. You want a “thinker”… but you don’t want to be challenged / fought with on every request or change.
Choose a collaborator you actually like: Designers can be a part of your extended organization for many years to come. If you don’t click, don’t force it. As with all relationships, some chemistry with your designer is key.
Now, base your selection on portfolio: On the other hand, you certainly don’t want to select a designer who can only execute in certain styles, as our own Joerg has always said. When we’re looking for new design candidates to join us here, we want 80% shared design aesthetic, 20% different…. to keep our own perspective fresh.
The task of finding your designer can be a daunting one to begin alone—but hopefully you’ve found some good steps to start with here.
Your best bet is to find a friend who knows a friend who RAVES about their designer / firm. Word of mouth is your—and a designer’s—best friend.
(Or, take the short cut… and just come knock on our door. 
Categories: Design, Outside the Square
Learning from nonprofits_1: Connect on a deeper level
You don’t have to go to the ballet, attend the symphony, or take your family to a museum––and you certainly don’t have to then send an additional chunk of your hard-earned money to support these organizations––but you might, and probably have, at some point.
(You’re considerably less likely, however, to send a check to your local movie theater after seeing Avatar.)
You don’t have to send funds annually to the school that you paid (or borrowed and then paid) tens of thousands of dollars to attend earlier in life… but many of us do. And you don’t have to open your wallet to help a conservation organization advance its agenda, or help a research institute to make strides towards unraveling Parkinson’s, or become a member of public television––but many of us do.
(Not many of us, on the other hand, are likely to become a member of our local NBC affiliate, or send a special thank-you check to our health insurer.)
Finally, you don’t have to cut into the small amount of unscheduled time you have on your hands to be a volunteer, or serve on a board, but you may well make that a priority.
So why do we participate in, support, and give our time to a range of nonprofit organizations that are “electives” in our life? And what can for-profit organizations learn from these relationships?
Successful nonprofits give people reasons to connect that are deeper––and longer-lived–– than any specific offering or service. They offer “value propositions” that go beyond fulfilling quotidian needs––to fulfill emotional needs.
And that connection, when nurtured and sustained, engenders loyalty; it creates advocates and ambassadors; and, when needed, it provides a margin for forgiveness if the organization occasionally falls short in delivering its promise. Customers, participants, board members and donors feel they are part of a shared enterprise.
So how are these deeper connections forged?
Three often intersecting factors come into play:
•
People believe in the vision and mission. They feel passionate about preserving and advancing symphonic music or ballet or theatre. Or they share a cause: curing breast cancer; realizing the potential of stem cells; arresting climate change; or improving literacy.
•
People want to be included in a special culture, or lifestyle. They enjoy the gallery opening or premiere, make friends with other participants, and value the tangible and intangible benefits of membership in a club––even if no one would use that word.
•
People feel their personal brands are built or enhanced by a nonprofit’s brand. They define (a part of) themselves through participation in the nonprofit’s mission and culture, whether they are supporters of improved world-wide healthcare, advocates for the arts, or helping to grow the next generation of conservation stewards.
For a for-profit business, forging this depth of connection can accomplish much: adding value to both offerings and to the enterprise; providing differentiation in the marketplace; and positioning offerings as more than––and worth more than––“commodities”. Price is less of an issue if one believes in the company––its mission, its culture, and how it contributes to self-definition.
Many successful companies promote their mission, culture, and brand. Apple, Starbucks, Volvo, IKEA, Method, The New York Times, The New Yorker… all these, of course, fulfill basic needs. But each also provides reasons to be more deeply connected––and to recommend the brand––and backs up a premium price with personal value. Remember back forty-odd years ago: Tom’s of Maine brought out a toothpaste people could believe in––toothpaste!––and created both a new category of product and a huge corps of user-advocates.
But deeper connections need to be cultivated and earned––just as donor relationships with an arts organization or hospital do––and those connections cannot be achieved with something as ephemeral as an advertising campaign. BP’s advertisements––until they were recently withdrawn for reasons that are obvious––were awash in multicolored flowers and promises of a greener world… but that didn’t establish them as a legitimate “green” (or blue) company for many.
Palmolive now has an “eco +” dish soap––at twice the price of its basic products––but it’s unlikely to engender the same warm feelings that Mrs. Myer’s, Method, or Seventh Generation do.
The good news––and an opportunity for many businesses––is that a deeper connection, and the benefits that follow, are often within reach. Many organizations do have a mission and a vision that would credibly add value for their constituents… if they bring it forward.
Sure, a company that conducts clinical trials for pharmaceutical companies might not seem to have a mission that adds value. But the results of its efforts––bringing safer drugs to market more quickly so that they can improve human health––could yield a richer story that would encourage participation and loyalty. In the same way, companies developing or employing clean technologies have a story to tell that can deepen their connection with a range of constituents.
Ben and Jerry’s, years ago, expanded upon their “we’re just a couple of hippies who started making ice cream in a garage” image by promising to donate a portion of sales to the preservation of rain forests––putting money where their mouths were, and gaining still more credibility (and loyalty) as the makers of “non-corporate” premium ice cream. (When Haagen-Daz tried a similar campaign, it fell flat because it was seen as out of sync with their brand and a “me too!” gimmick.)
Nonprofits have learned a lot of best practices from the for-profit world: they’ve become more businesslike; they run tighter ships. But they also have many lessons to teach for-profit businesses about deepening connections and advancing relationships.
(Stay tuned to our RSS feed for the next post in this series: Learning from nonprofits_2: Inviting people in––and encouraging them to stay.)
Categories: Branding, Nonprofits, Strategy and Management
Digital Friday: do you still see “social” as the new kid on the block?
We often speak of social media platforms like they’re still very much the “new kids on the block.”
And true enough — new platforms and applications and technologies are popping up every day, week, month.
But did you know YouTube has been around more than half a decade now?
It’s true — we’ve been looking up cat videos so long that it feels like we’ve always been able to. In fact, the search function within the YouTube site is reputably the second-largest search engine on the internet… after Google, of course.
And Facebook? Turning five next year.
Even “upstart” Twitter is long past the terrible twos.
Some companies have seen the community-building possibilities of the web since the very beginning of the “social revolution”, while some are still tiptoeing around the edges, wondering if the new age of transparency is going to leave them far too exposed.
Where do you stand?
If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you’re dipping your toe in to these waters… or diving right in daily.
But here’s the question: how long do you think it takes technology to become a normal part of our lives? How long does it take until we can’t imagine our lives without it?
And the biggest question of all (and one we deal with daily) is this: how long can the brands and organizations that still don’t see social technology as relevant to their operations now — and their future — hold out before choosing not to take a step forward leaves them several steps back?
Or are we already there?
What do you think?
Categories: Uncategorized
That’s the way I scroll!
Websites. We all wish they did exactly what we wanted and looked exactly how we wanted. I blame Google for this. How dare they make searching the entire internet so easy!?
You want to find something in literally seconds or less (they even brag about how long it took to find it…)?
Here you go! Just type it in the one box provided and you shall receive… MAGIC. (complete with spell correction!)
That is probably the most extreme example I can come up with of a company providing exactly what we expect when we land on their site. But this is much harder to accomplish when you’re, say, a museum, musician, painter… or the Pope.
There is SO much to take into consideration when you’re putting together a website. You want to showcase yourself or your organization in the best light possible, and attract the widest possible audience at the same time. After all, why have a website if no one wants to go to it?
But problems arise when everyone and their grandmother has a different way they go about browsing the web. And without intending offense to anyone in the list, these are my unofficial categories of internet users:
- the “laptoppers” who want it all above the fold
- the designers with gorgeous high resolution monitors
- the poor souls stuck in a job where Internet Explorer 6 is as thrilling as life gets
- the Firefox users who need a limit on how many open tabs they can handle
- the folks who love Flash sites
- the folks who HATE Flash sites
- and coming soon: the iPad crowd touching their way around your site
I’m definitely leaving out many other groups, but this was the range that I came up with off the top of my head. So how the heck do you build a site that will be enjoyed by as many people (or at least the widest range of users) as possible?
Us humans are a picky breed, and that’s ok, except when you’re trying to create the site rather than consume it.
So tell us:
1. What are your “must haves” or “must dos” for great websites?
2. What do you hate to find at a website?
3. If you’re a developer, what client/manager/director requests drive you nuts?
4. If you’re a client/director/manager who uses developers, what do they do/include/argue for that totally confuses you in their designs?
Go!
Categories: Digital Media
Nonprofit brand stewardship: it’s everyone’s job
The importance of brand-building to nonprofit organizations — especially to higher education institutions — isn’t news anymore. A strong brand strategy has been part of the marketing and fundraising toolkit for a while.
But in this era when everyone has an opportunity (if not an outright responsibility) to communicate on behalf of his or her organization, it might not be quite enough to consider brand management the charge of the senior marketing or development executives.
Blogs, group websites, social media activities, and old-fashioned print and real-world interactions (between faculty and their peers elsewhere, for example, or on alumni Facebook pages) are just parts of the mosaic depiction of a given brand.
How can institutions support, and even encourage these kinds of communications without undermining their brands?
In most institutions, the marketing (student recruiting) and advancement (fundraising) folks conscientiously cultivate their institutions’ brands… but countless other brand impressions are formed quite by accident, without any coordination, and sometimes out of line with what senior executives wish for.
To put all these communications into a more coherent picture, nonprofit institutions should adopt a brand stewardship model. In this approach, institutions recognize that brand-building is everyone’s responsibility, not just the charge of the marketing operation.
Let’s take a typical university for example: at least six on-campus offices share stewardship of the university brand:
- The president
- The provost
- Alumni relations
- Admissions
- Development
- Public relations
…and communications are directed to at least eleven different key constituent populations, from prospective undergrads to industry partners and trustees. Each office has a different interaction with each population — but the interactions should not be undertaken in isolation or without consideration of interactions with other offices!
Different offices and different initiatives need to share a verbal platform and a system for consistent, but “tiltable” visual presentation. In this way, a given constituency — like alumni — get distinct, but related communications from different parts of the university.
Where is the bubble for the marketing group? When a marketing effort is effective, it transparently connects a constituent with one of the brand steward offices.
In this model, the marketing group is the expert agency that helps to direct and execute communication strategy — supporting each of the brand stewards with the thinking and tools they need to build the brand without also having to become expert marketers. Brand efforts need to be championed by the president and provost: between them they have the strongest influence over the entire campus population’s communication attitude and strategy.
When nonprofit institutions adopt a coordinated brand stewardship model for communications, each interaction or experience helps to design the brand mosaic — the rich, varied, but coherent picture of what their complex community stands for, and what it is really like.
Categories: Branding, Strategy and Management
Digital Friday: are brands more customer-focused than ever before?
According to this report from the WorldBusiness YouTube channel, they have to be… or else.
At the same time as brands are becoming more dominant in our lives, so is the fervor with which brands are studying their customers’ behavior. It seems that many companies believe the key to successful branding lies in who can dig the furthest into their customers’ brains.
What do you think? What do the brands that resonate with you most have over all the rest?
And now for something completely different… or is it?
Here’s a video of a short-ish talk from Simon Sinek from TEDx Puget Sound on how great leaders inspire action:
Does their success come down to the fact that get their “customers” the most, too?
Happy Friday, everyone!
Categories: Digital Media, Outside the Square
If you Tweet it, they will come… but only if you’re famous?
Recently, Google was able to snag traveling minstrel Conan O’Brien for a ~50 minute exercise in hilarity and self-deprecation (for all parties involved) in the form of an assembly-like Q&A session.
The event was so funny they posted it on YouTube for the world to enjoy (despite legal ambiguities in Conan’s arguably nefarious contract with NBC.) You can watch the entire event here:
Amidst all the fun and games, something interesting jumped out at me. At around the 18 minute mark, Conan begins discussing the genesis of his current tour and the marketing strategy employed to sell tickets. By “Marketing Strategy” I mean he sent out one tweet and the shows (all of them) sold out in hours.
That was it, no budget, no interviews, no ads, nothing. He utilized a simple method of communication that effectively bypassed an entire industry — one that was symbiotic with his career in Television no less. That’s the kind of revolutionary action akin to Radiohead’s famous “pay us what you want here’s the album” business model.
Naturally, this has turned a lot of heads. Conan himself uses it to point out that “…the world has completely changed.” In many ways, he’s right. Social media has lead to an interconnection between fans and purveyors of entertaining content the likes of which has not been seen before. The filters of prior mediums are slowly disintegrating.
I am, however, not altogether convinced that “old” marketing is dead, or even close to dead. Conan’s tweet was successful because it was riding a massive wave of popularity; and though that wave has been carried by the internet, it’s genesis was all too “old media”.
When an independent comic builds a marketing empire on Twitter, or achieves significant cultural recognition via just YouTube (some are getting there), then we can say the world has changed. Until then, Conan is just doing what famous people always do… getting noticed. When Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie go to the supermarket, they get followed by the paparazzi. This does not mean that going to the supermarket is now a viable way to get your picture taken.
Despite my apparent pessimism, it is at least fair to say, that Conan, like Radiohead, has helped get the ball rolling. There hasn’t been a revolution, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t moving in a new direction.
We’re just taking it one step at a time.
Categories: Digital Media
Twitter
LinkedIn