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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
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