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Found Type: Hite Radio and TV Repair
Conveniently located on Washington Street in the south end of Boston, Hite Radio and TV repair has been in business for over 70 years! They’re widely known around these parts for amazing service and the ability to repair just about any electronic device you could get your hands on.
Though I’ve never brought in any gadgets for repair, I have been admiring their vintage store front signage for about 3 years and 6 months and 5 or 6 days (Sametz happens to be 2 blocks from this lovely chunck of eye candy).
The combination of large sans serif in-lit type, painted black iconic logos, some great art-deco letterforms and sun-bleached yellowing panels atop a flat black platform is hard to ignore. The brick building beside it couldn’t be a more perfect complement.
Just goes to show — you’ll see great design everywhere, if you keep your eyes open to the possibilities (even on the way to work!)
What “stuff worth looking at” is lurking in your everyday life?
Categories: Design, Outside the Square
People first, brand second. Really.
Putting customers first, and brand second, can be somewhat of a tough pill to swallow for marketers.
Sure, most understand the need to build communities around their brands, and to nurture those who cluster around the experiences their brands enable. For many, however, it largely remains lip service. Marketers talk about putting customers first, yet many continue to focus on the more transactional tactics of marketing products, programs, and services to build their brand.
They’re missing out.
Human nature doesn’t drive us to connect with brands. Rather, people desire a sense of connection with other people. (Does anyone really love Facebook? What people do love is the easy means of connection Facebook affords.) Your brand, informed by those communities around it that matter most, is a means to an end—a platform for interaction among like-minded individuals.
It’s not about you, it’s about them.
Armed with new tools, and more timely constituent information than has ever been available before, businesses (nonprofits and for-profits alike) can effectively put people first and build their brands in the process—increasing loyalty, decreasing costs, and bringing important feedback and new ideas to the fore.
A few things to keep in mind:
Putting people first means (drumroll…) putting people first.
Your brand program should be informed by the values and lifestyles of those who interact with your programs, products, and services. Use social media and RSS readers to set up listening posts to hear what people are saying, not just about your brand, but among each other. Interact with customers in-person wherever and whenever possible. Invite a group of high-value constituents over for tea.
If you come to understand the nature of those clustering around your brand, you’ll inevitably come to understand the nature of your brand as a platform for community. Institutionalize that kind of thinking above and beyond the walls of the marketing department and re-organize around it if possible. It’s a more effective, and cheaper, brand-building practice than marketing product “speeds and feeds.”
Your constituents aren’t monolithic, and connections must be reinforced.
Those who cluster around your brand likely share a common, high-level set of values—yet each has their own personal reasons for showing up to the party.
Some may participate for social, emotional, or spiritual reasons. Some may be indulging passions, pursuing particular goals, or exploring new ideas. Determining your constituent segments remains vitally important, but you must do more than pump out perfectly tuned communications.
Your brand program should advance opportunities for people to interact among themselves along those resonant wavelengths, and to help them realize their personal visions—however big or small. Doing so strengthens the community around your brand, in turn building your brand.
Don’t try to control the cluster.
People that cluster around your brand will most certainly talk. In fact, you want them to, and it’s far better if conversations are within earshot. If people are critical of your brand, wouldn’t you rather hear it firsthand? Rather than seeking to control or edit the dialogue, embrace it and engage in it.
Peoples’ criticism may in fact be spot on (Domino’s anyone?) and your brand community could become a crowd-sourcing tool for improvements and bold, new ideas. Rather than control, seek to steward those who cluster around your brand by providing context and content that maximize engagement.
By putting people first—really putting people first—marketers can truly bring brands to life. More than just putting a “community” button on your website, more than just amassing 4,000 followers on Twitter, building your brand around people means a strategic shift in thinking.
It requires literally decreasing the distance between you and those who matter most, listening, engaging, and not being afraid of what you might find—because it’s likely true, and it might be the spark of a great new idea.
How is your brand putting people first?
Categories: Branding, Strategy and Management
The secret to getting your emails (and newsletter and tweets…) read
Which email subject line would you click?
“This word went from rags to ruin”
or
“tatterdemalion: M-W’s Word of the Day”
I’ve subscribed to Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Day email for longer than I can remember. For most of those years, the subject line of that daily email was like option B: I could scan it, see if I knew the word or was interested in reading it, and decide to click. Over the years I found I opened the emails less and less often, and usually only in response to words I wasn’t familiar with.
And then, on April 10, it switched. To option A. And I’ve been opening the emails almost every day since.
Why? Merriam-Webster managed to create a curiosity gap, a concept I first learned about in Chip and Dan Heath’s messaging masterpiece, Made to Stick. It’s that gap between what is said and what is known, that gap that makes people ask a question, or somehow seek an answer.
That’s why I couldn’t help but notice that a simple change in an email subject line radically changed my behavior with an email I’ve subscribed to for years. Suddenly it became a guessing game: What word is it? Do I know it already?
But how often, especially when we’re crafting enewsletters or other communications (heck, this applies to headlines for blog posts, tweets, etc…) do you give it all away in your headline?
No matter how effective your messaging or your well-planned communications, it can collapse at the point of choice if the message is either too opaque or gives it all away at the get-go. We experimented with this ourselves with our last newsletter. We started out by calling it “Fundraising 2010,” but ended up titling it “What you need to know to fundraise in 2010.” Longer? Yes. But more effective? We’d like to think so.
So the next time you’re writing a title for something, whether it’s your next newsletter…or next tweet…think:
What would make you open it?
Categories: Digital Media, Strategy and Management
Is your Feierabend billable?
Loosely translated, Feierabend means “celebrating the evening”. German workers use this term to happily announce the end of a work shift to each other. For many of us, however, the end of the work shift doesn’t really mean we ‘drop the pen’ and don’t think about work until the very next morning.
If you belong to that set of folks whose week is packed with back-to-back meetings and time doesn’t allow for much creative thinking, the wheels keep spinning way after six o’clock. As a passionate, solution-driven designer, most of my good ideas have come to my mind while cooking dinner or going for a swim to balance out a hectic workday. Water is generally considered to be inspiring. That might be a reason why a morning shower often leads to the perfect idea for a concept or a much-needed new take on a not-yet-worked-out logo design.
But how do you keep track of those minutes/hours spent with work, when you are supposed enjoy your Feierabend? AND, how do you bill your clients for those excellent solutions developed during your spare time!?
Should we consider our ongoing thinking simply “service”?
Categories: Design
Mirror, mirror: whose mission are you serving?
The scene: you and four or five of your colleagues are gathered at your conference table. The topic: how to launch your new outreach initiative for your nonprofit. You’re working out the strategy—what it will do, for whom, and so on—but before you know it, you’re talking about how special your organization is and wondering why people don’t realize it.
It’s clear to you what you stand for—why isn’t it clear to all? You can cite programs, achievements, statistics…yet you struggle for attention. If only your brand were stronger…
Well, maybe. At this point it would be tempting and easy to begin obsessing over your brand, to dig deeper into research, to gaze deeper inward at your organization and mission, to revise your messages ad infinitum. But while it’s imperative you have a clear picture of yourself to guide your decisions (knowing what motivates you, what’s your purpose, what do you want to be), it’s easy to get lost in the mirror’s reflection.
Most of the people you attract into your programs, or onto your board, or onto your donor rolls, will be there because there was something in the engagement for them. Maybe something material and practical, maybe something psychological or emotional. But in any case, it’s their mission, not yours, that sparks the action.
So what does this mean for you and your colleagues at the meeting room table? Look at your initiative from your constituents’ perspectives. Why would they get involved or give? What would get in the way? What would be the reward? What would they tell their friends? What’s in it for them, at an individual level?
You might be working to help hundreds, thousands, or millions of people—but you engender experiences that build your brand one person at a time.
So next time you find yourself looking within for answers, look only long enough to make sure you still recognize what you see.
Then step outside your organization and take a look: now what do you see?
Categories: Branding, Strategy and Management
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