In follow-up to a recent post about branding and rebranding, I’m not sure how to classify this item.
It could be an example of hope over reason; or a grand experiment to test the persuasive powers of 21st Century media. Or a doomed attempt to paint over hate. Or maybe it’s satire. But it does succeed at demonstrating there are limits to what you can sell.
http://all-that-is-interesting.com/swastika-t-shirt-fail
You don’t own your brand. Your customers and constituents do.
“Branding” is one of those overused and misunderstood terms. When an organization embarks on a “rebranding” that usually means it’s changing its logo, colors and perhaps the tagline that comes after the name. Sometimes the whole point is just to freshen things up. But often, it’s also an effort to change the way an organization is viewed.
While a company is almost wholly responsible for the way it’s perceived in public, changing that perception is a long, hard process. Your brand is the shorthand manifestation of a larger story, told one transaction at a time, over many years, with customers, prospects, employees, contractors, salesmen and everybody else who experiences it in some small way.
In 2015, Time Warner Cable was America’s most hated cable TV company, according to a CNBC report on the American Customer Satisfaction Index. It was tied statistically with Mediacom, a smaller competitor; and over the years it has traded places at the top (bottom?) of the list with Comcast – the industry’s largest player.
In 2016, Time Warner Cable merged with Charter Communications (middle of the pack in customer satisfaction) and they rebranded as Spectrum.
Now? According to the latest American Customer Satisfaction Index, the Charter Communications half of Spectrum still stands in the middle and the Time Warner half still ranks among the most hated providers in one of the most hated industries – standing at third-worst in the 2017 survey.
Worst: Mediacom, followed by Xfinity — which is just Comcast rebranded.
The point? Changing your name and logo won’t change your brand. Successful rebranding means changing what you do and who you are, and then giving everybody else some meaningful prompts to observe the change and buy into it.
For many companies, this is a natural progression. They improve processes, upgrade or broaden product lines, develop more effective ways of interacting with customers. Updating the visuals – the logo, colors, website, tagline, etc. – supports this by drawing attention to these positive changes and helping customers and prospects see them as part of a larger story.
The key is authenticity. You can’t hide from your brand. You can’t tell people you’re something you aren’t.
When you think of United Airlines, what comes to mind? For many people, it’s bad press: Delayed flights, lost and damaged baggage, usurious fees, and videos of customers being berated and physically assaulted. It has earned that brand. So what would the reaction be if it tried to revive its old “Fly the friendly skies” campaign? Nobody would believe it; social media would make great sport of it.
For decades, JC Penney propped up stagnant sales with coupons and gimmicks. It earned a brand identify as the place to layer one promotion on top of another to achieve impossible markdowns – never mind that the markdown may have been on an unrealistic suggested retail price. In 2011, under a new CEO, the iconic retailer rebranded as JCP and did away with gimmicky sales and magical markdowns. Stores were remodeled as fashion centers offering “everyday low prices.” The change didn’t bring in many new customers, and existing customers started going elsewhere to hunt for deals. Same-store sales dropped 20 percent in just months. Forbes magazine declared it an epic fail. The company may never recover.
On the other hand, in 2014, the CVS drugstore chain confronted the fact that sale of tobacco products contradicted its “healthy” brand message as it worked to expand business far beyond the retail sector. So it dropped tobacco sales – a real change that did some shot-term damage to earnings but a world of good for its brand.
Which brings us back to the cable TV business.
After being crowned the most hated cable TV company in 2015, Time Warner provided this official statement: “We made significant investments to improve the reliability of our network during 2014 and, by many measures, we are delivering customers a better experience today.” By many measures, perhaps, but not the right measures.
I was a longtime Time Warner customer and have never had an issue with its network reliability. But year after year, other reasons to stop doing business with them continued to pile up until I finally cut the cord. Not long ago, I had to interact with Spectrum on behalf of an elderly relative. Nothing has changed. Spectrum may be a new name for consumers, and the company’s new marketing may promise a world of wonderment and pleasure, but dealing with customer service by phone and in person was the same old stick in the eye.
If your brand identity is tired and drab, by all means, freshen it up. But if you have a brand problem – that is, if your customers and prospects don’t like you – the new paint job won’t do much good. The people who really own your brand will see right through it.
I recently found myself working with the owner of a service business whose marketing materials send business calls to his home phone – which he only checks at night. He doesn’t use e-mail, and his mobile phone is set up to not take messages.
He apparently doesn’t like to be bothered.
On the other extreme, I recently encountered a small-business owner whose e-mail signature reads like the Congressional Directory; it provides 3 phone numbers, fax, 2 e-mail addresses, Twitter, Facebook and, of course, mailing address.
It left me wondering how I should reach him. Does he actually check all of these contact points several times a day? Should I send messages through several of these, or just one? And which one?
People who provide so many possible points of contact are trying to be considerate. They may hope to create convenience, or convey that they’re accessible and deeply interested in hearing from you. Unintentionally, they create uncertainty.
So how much contact information is just right?
Providing an e-mail address is mandatory – even if you hate computers.
But for small companies, one address is always enough: People expect a timely response to e-mails – not an immediate one. So it’s more important to give confidence that their message is going to the right place and will be handled promptly.
Providing multiple addresses puts the burden on the customer or prospect to figure out the right one for their specific message. Most likely, they’ll just send it to both – meaning you end up dealing with it twice.
Because nobody can know how any given organization will actually route an e-mail message once it arrives, the best way to provide certainty is to offer a single address and take responsibility through internal processes for making sure it gets to the correct location.
Phone
Phone numbers are a little different. When someone makes a phone call, they usually hope to reach you immediately. But in this age, we’re all realistic: If you provide a single phone number, people aren’t surprised – and are usually tolerant – if they have to leave a message and wait for you to return the call.
But if you provide two or more phone numbers, it tells people they can expect to reach a real person – and that they should keep dialing until they do. The more numbers you offer, the more frustrating the exercise becomes. So it’s OK to offer multiple phone numbers – but only if one of them is actually going to lead to direct human contact (in which case, why not give people that number first?).
Social media
Social media is a disaster waiting to happen.
If you provide your Twitter handle as part of your contact information, you are implying that you’ll receive, read and respond to direct messages sent via Twitter. There are people out there who really do communicate this way. Most businesses are not prepared to actually do this; they’re just trying to get more Twitter followers, and don’t even know how to check for direct Twitter messages – let alone do it 3 or 4 times a day.
It’s the same with Facebook. If you provide the address of your Facebook page in the context of contact information, people will use it to engage you for issues that deserve immediate attention. Rather than call or e-mail with a complaint they’ll place it for all to see on your company’s Facebook page. I’ve seen serious complaints sit on company Facebook pages for weeks at a time without ever being addressed.
If you want to use social media for day-to-day contact with customers, that’s wonderful – as long as someone in your organization is responsible for checking and responding frequently.
But if the point of promoting your social media pages is to build a following, then don’t make this part of your customer service and contact information. Give it a separate location in your marketing materials and use words that set the right expectation, such as “Follow us on Facebook.”
All of this may sound intuitive, but I see multiple examples every day of businesses that harm themselves in the way they present contact information on websites, brochures, business cards and e-mail signatures.
Take a look at yours. Are you offering too little, too much or is it just right?
Many of my dealings with small businesses involve the passing back and forth of logos and such for use in advertisements, large banners, websites, Powerpoint presentations, etc. Often as not, the digital copies of these art elements are less than optimal for the intended job. The result is fuzzy reproduction or compromised design in order to minimize the problems caused by artwork provided in the wrong format.
Graphic design jargon and technology may seem confusing, but you really only need to know the purpose of 4 different file types to handle most situations. A description of those (and a few more) follows, but first, here’s what you need to know most:
If you don’t have an EPS for existing logos, go back to the original designer and ask to get them. Do it now,
before he/she gets hit by a bus or something. Depending on your original agreement, you may not actually own the right to the EPS file; copyright law favors the designer in this. But if the designer balks at sending you the file, be insistent – even if it means paying a reasonable fee to get it into your hands. (Personally, I think a designer should be willing to turn over everything to you for one price; then again, if you’re one of those clients who wheedles and needles the designer after working him/her down on price 3 times, you may not deserve it.)
For advertisements, flyers, printed newsletters and other pieces of art that are composed of multiple elements, it’s probably enough to get a high-resolution PDF and JPG. (If you own a full version of Adobe Acrobat, you only need one of these, as you can make your own PDFs from JPGs and vice versa.) These graphic creations are essentially single-use, so having the native file – often Photoshop, Illustrator or InDesign – isn’t going to be of much help. But know that if you want to resize or otherwise adapt this file for any other use, you’re still captive to the designer who holds the original file.
If you really want complete control, specify in advance that you want a copy of the native file along with the PDF and/or JPG. That allows you to send the original work to any designer for subsequent use. Again, some designers will provide it as a courtesy if you ask, while others may charge extra to give up control of the native file. You’ll decide if the price is worthwhile.
Now, here’s a basic overview of the file types and what each is used for:
JPG or JPEG – Joint Photographic Expert Group: The first issue with a JPG is that it’s a photo of your logo. You can enlarge or stretch it, and apply special effects across the whole thing, but you can’t change its fundamental appearance. If the type is rendered in black, you can’t magically make it some other color; if the logo background is white, you can’t make it transparent.
The most important thing to know about JPGs is that they lose information (i.e. resolution) when passed back and forth by phones and e-mail clients that automatically compress files to speed up transmission. That’s why a 2 MB photo e-mailed from your hard drive may arrive as a marginal 500 kb file. The lower the kb number, the smaller the image has to be in order to look sharp. Passed back and forth a few times, you’ll end up with a 24kb that looks fuzzy no matter what.
The compression technology used is described as “lossy” – once compressed, the detail cannot be recovered. This explains why a JPG scraped from a website can’t be used for print. Your computer screen shows resolution of 72 dpi (dots per inch); by default, websites don’t bother storing anything higher. But a printing press requires at least 300 dpi – information that’s simply not there in a photo taken off a website.
Don’t pass the same JPG back and forth. File your original high-resolution JPGs carefully and always send from those. And figure out how to set your e-mail preferences to avoid automatic file compression.
TIFF – Tagged Image File Format: It’s less familiar than JPG, because point-and-shoot cameras and smart phones typically don’t save as TIFFs. But it’s the preferred technology for storing and sharing photos and logos because it uses “lossless” compression: An image can be compressed and decompressed without losing detail. Mainstream design and desktop publishing software, such as MS Office and Apple Pages, recognize TIFF files as well as JPGs.
PNG – Portable Network Graphics: This has recently replaced the JPG format as preferred for most uses. It uses “lossless” compression, so the file doesn’t degrade over time as it’s passed from hand to hand. It was originally designed just for online use. It loads faster on a website or computer than a similar JPG file. Now, technology improvements allow high-resolution PNG files to be used for printed applications as well. One more advantage is that PNGs can be created with transparent backgrounds — so you don’t get that ugly white box when logos are placed onto colored pages.
PDF – Portable Document Format: It’s built for taking complex files with multiple elements and locking them into a single file that looks the same no matter how it’s opened or used. It’s like a collage; all the individual elements are blended into a single piece of art that can’t be unwoven. For that reason, it’s a poor format for managing logos and single art elements; each element loses its own identity. If you send someone a PDF of your logo for use in some other project – or worse, a PDF of your ad with instructions to pull the logo off of that – they’ll have to cut out the logo, convert it to a JPG and figure out what to do with the fuzzy blob that results.
EPS – Encapsulated PostScript: It’s the mother file – where art elements are rendered as smooth lines rather than bits and pixels. You won’t be able to do anything with this file type; programs like Word and MS Publisher aren’t designed to handle them. But it’s what a graphic designer needs to manipulate details within the art element – such as changing the background color, or removing an element, etc. Further, they use “lossless” technology for movement from one user to another without loss of clarity.
EPS files typically aren’t used to store large composite files like ads. They’re for individual art elements like logos, that get lots of use and adaptation. Think of an EPS file as the archival copy of your artwork.
GIF – Graphic Interchange Format: Web-friendly and peripheral for your needs. They are small files that allow transparent backgrounds and lend themselves to animation. But they only support 256 colors using the RGB (Red Blue Green) color technology of older computer screens. They cannot be used for printing because they don’t support the CMYK color technology (Cyan Magenta Yellow Black) required for paper.
There are dozens of other relevant file types, but these cover most of what you run across.
5 reasons to run seasonal ads in the Heights Observer
A surprisingly large number of owners still think their small business doesn’t need a website.
Among them are some of the smallest businesses, like handymen, gutter cleaners and house painters. But it also includes businesses with higher overhead and more at stake: mechanics, limousine services, even restaurants, retailers and professional service providers like lawyers and accountants.
A website isn’t a luxury – especially for small businesses. It can mean the difference between being perceived as a painting company and a guy with a ladder. Today, a website is like a telephone and a business card: Don’t even think of doing business without one.
Here are the five most common reasons small-business owners tell me they don’t need a website – along with some push-back.
A 2012 survey by Search Engine Land indicated 85% of consumers use the internet to find or qualify local businesses.
Lots of small businesses have integrated the Internet with their day-to-day operations by building feature-rich websites with blogs, e-commerce, appointment-schedulers and other add-ons. This can be valuable and has successfully transformed many businesses. But that may not be what you want.
A website does not have to change the way you do business. It doesn’t need to have state-of-the-art social media integration. It doesn’t need to be optimized to show up at the top of search engine rankings. There’s nothing wrong with a simple website that provides basic information and seldom changes.
There are three technical requirements to build your first website: A domain name (prices vary, but $15 a year is a fair, gimmick-free price); a hosting service (ballpark $120 a year) and a simple drag-and-drop platform on which to build your website (free). The large hosting services like GoDaddy and 1&1 provide everything you need in one place (and you’ll enjoy the experience about as much as a trip to Walmart on Dec. 24).
If you’re unfamiliar or uncomfortable with the process, ask for help from a friend who has already been through it; it’ll cost you a bottle of wine. Or pay someone who specializes in building small-business websites – who will help scale the project to your needs and budget.
The harder job for most people is figuring out what to put on the website. So make it simple. I suggest starting with just 4 pages:
Home: The introductory landing page that provides basic information about what your business does and who it serves.
Services: A page that goes into a little detail about what you offer. It doesn’t have to say much – just a list of the things you do.
About: A page that provides background about you and the business; use the same stuff that you say to prospective customers when trying to close a sale or deal with them.
Contact: It’s enough if you provide an e-mail address and phone number. Also include your mailing address – in case somebody wants to send you a check some day.
After the website is up and running, you may decide to add one or two more pages:
One warning: Don’t illustrate your website with photos that you “scrape” from other websites or from Google Images. Most of these are copyrighted, and the cost if the copyright holder finds you (which is more likely than you think) can be exorbitant. If you need photos, try Pixabay.com or Stock.xchng, where photos really are free to use as long as you follow their guidelines.
Don’t worry about all the other fragments of knowledge you hear about building a good website. They all have their time and place. But for you, it’s enough to establish your online presence and then get back to business. You’ll be glad you did.
Voting for the 2015 Best of the Heights Awards continues for another four weeks – and it’s not too late to exploit it.
If your business is located in Cleveland Heights or University Heights, this local recognition program provides an opportunity for free and low-cost marketing. Here’s how this year’s program works, and how to take advantage of it in your business:
How it works
People fill out nomination forms for their favorite Heights businesses in 19 categories, and those receiving the most votes are named “Best of the Heights” at an event on Oct. 7. Nomination forms are available in the Heights Observer (they’ve been running since May) and online through FutureHeights. It’s that simple.
How to exploit it for your own good
1. Nominate yourself. There’s nothing wrong with self-promotion, and nobody will ever know you were the first person to nominate the business. Ballots require your name and contact information, but that isn’t shared publicly; it’s just to make sure the nominations are valid. Here’s a link to the online form.
2. Ask staff, family and friends to nominate you too, and tell then what category they should use.
3. Ask customers – and let them know which category. The very act of asking customers to nominate you puts them on your team and brings them closer to you. Here are ways to make it easy for them to nominate you:
4. Get your staff involved. Make sure everyone on your team knows this is a special initiative. Give each his or her own supply of forms (they can place their initials in a small spot in the corner) and offer a reasonable incentive – a cash bonus or gift certificate – to the staff member who brings in the most valid nominations.
5. Team up with friends in your business district. While you’re soliciting nominations, offer to suggest businesses in other categories if they’ll do the same for you.
6. If you’re a finalist or a winner, promote yourself. Put the honor into your advertising, on your letterhead template, in your e-mail communications, etc. Where appropriate, provide a link to the Heights Observer’s coverage of the winners (probably in October).
When all is said and done, the nominating process is a useful and refreshing way to promote your business. It engages your customers at a different level; it helps them think of your business not just for what it sells, but for how well it runs.
Even if your business is tiny or new and you think you have little chance of being named a finalist, the process is likely to strengthen some existing relationships and create new ones.
It might also reveal areas where you need to build up your marketing, such as building your Facebook network, or tidying up your customer database, or creating regular e-mail communications.
In the worst case, if you find people aren’t excited to nominate the business, you’ll have learned something important – and can begin looking for ways to improve the customer experience.
The Best of the Heights is designed to highlight and honor the many excellent independent businesses that are located here. But it’s also a platform for you to do some honest self-promotion.
For many of us, business is going to slow down at some point in the next few weeks of the holiday season. A lot of people will use it to clean their desks, or maybe even take some time off.
It’s also a good time to set up your marketing efforts for more impact in the New Year.
Here are 5 projects that are perfect to undertake during the holiday slow-down – whenever it begins for your business. If you pick just one or two, it will make you a more effective marketer next year.
Every website needs attention now and then – both from a perspective of content and technology. Content: Over time, the language you use to describe your business has probably changed. Visit every page on your site and update the language as needed. Technology: Website platforms and content management systems (e.g. WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, etc.) get updated regularly, as do the many applications, plugins and accessories that may be built into your site. These should all be updated at least once a year. If you get too far behind in updates, your website’s speed, functionality and stability can suffer.
Always back up your database before starting. And if you’re not very comfortable doing this work, ask your website developer/technician how much it would cost to do this work; it shouldn’t be more than a a few hundred dollars. If you do it yourself, at least alert him/her to be ready in case your site crashes.
LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and all the others are constantly updating functionality and your business is constantly evolving. As with your website, year-end is a good time to go through each of your social media channels to make sure they contain only your current information and that you’re utilizing all of the new gizmos that offer value to your business.
Is your e-mail list on a service like Constant Contact or MailChimp? If so, you can go through the list and segment it by major customer categories for more targeted messages in the year ahead.
If you don’t use such a service, consider using this time to start; they’re easy to use and generally free (unless you have a really large list). Maintaining your own e-mail list is a hassle and comes with risk – the biggest of which is that you can be branded a serial spammer and blocked from delivering any message to major e-mail domains like aol.com and sbcglobal.net. The e-mail services are designed specifically to assure you comply with anti-spam regulations, but they also offer powerful tools and analysis to boost the impact of your communications.
Don’t have a list? For many small businesses, this is their most valuable marketing asset. Use this time to get one started by signing up with one of the e-mail services. Then, put a registration button on your website, Facebook page, etc., put a QR code in your place of business and printed materials, and offer incentives for customers to sign up.
How important is an e-mail list? One local retailer just sent a direct-mail promotion offering a $20 gift card just for signing up.
If you send out regular communications to your e-mail list, consider whether your template should be refreshed. Sometimes, an old degraded template is deterrent enough to keep you from sending business-building messages.
Does yours force you to fill more pigeonholes than you have content for? Does it look dated? If your practice is to paste new content into copies of older newsletters, a lot of the original design elements – font size, spacing, separators, etc. – have probably been corrupted over time.
Are you using Facebook and Twitter effectively? Add another. If your products or services are highly visual, you may lean toward Pinterest. If you sell to businesses, LinkedIn is probably best bet – though it can be extremely frustrating to use. Consider Instagram, Vine, Tumblr and Stumbleupon. Google+ is too big to ignore, though most people I know struggle to figure out what it’s good for.
Whatever project(s) you choose to improve next year’s marketing, I hope you have a safe and happy holiday season.
Image courtesy of Ambro/Freedigitalphotos.net
