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The Best Brands Are Mirrors
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
The genius of the ‘Dove Sketches’ campaign wasn’t that it highlighted the issues women have around body image and beauty, it was that it held a mirror up to every one of us. It tapped into our collective vulnerability on a visceral level.
Brands like Dove, Instagram, Harley-Davidson, Virgin, Nike, Moleskine, Dyson, Brene Brown, Apple, Tiffany, Airbnb, Red Bull, my BodyPump instructor Duane and your local organic butcher, shift our perception about what’s possible for us. The real reason we come back to them again and again has less to do with how well they work and more to do with the way they change how we feel by degrees.
The best brands reflect our potential back to us. They resonate with us not necessarily because they sell the best products, but because they help us to see the best in ourselves.
Image by Ivana Vasilj.
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5 Questions To Ask Before You Schedule A Meeting That Matters
Have you ever been on a Skype call where you could hear the person on the other end trying to quietly eat their lunch in the background? Don’t ever do that. Firstly it’s bad for your digestion, and honestly if you don’t make yourself have a break to eat, what’s the point of getting out of bed in the morning.
This might sound obvious but the real reason you shouldn’t multi-task during meetings is not just that it’s incredibly disrespectful to the other person, but by not making time to give someone your full attention you’re signalling your intention. You’re reflecting to the person this doesn’t matter, and worse still that they don’t matter. That’s how your actions make them feel. The result is your attitude sucks all of the life out of the meeting and shapes the outcome—probably not for the better.
There is an alternative, honest course of action to take and five questions to ask yourself before you schedule a meeting that matters.
1. Why are we having this meeting?
Is the point to manage or to lead? I’m not sure you need to meet to manage.
2. Do I really want to speak to, connect with, change this person?
Be honest with yourself. Spend time with people you want to make a difference to.
If you have no choice (the boss said so) understand that your intention affects the outcome.
3. Am I treating my colleague like I would want them to treat me?
My friend Moe makes each person he connects with feel like they were the only person he wanted to hear from today and all of that gets reflected back to him.
4. What value am I adding by being in the room?
Bringing your whole self into the room (even if it’s virtual) ignites things.
You might find it makes for a more productive and rewarding experience for you too.
5. Could we do this by email?
If you can’t attend the meeting with the right intention group email might be the way to go.
There’s something incredibly rare about a person or business that says, “we are jumping out of our skin to talk to, or work with you”…as long as they mean it. Yes, meetings have a practical purpose, of course we need to get projects managed and to-dos checked off, but not at the price of losing our humanity.
If you scheduled it make it matter.
Image by Francois Hollande.
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Make It Look Like Duarte
It’s possible to hire someone to create a slide deck in the style of Duarte for less than the hourly rate of a half decent designer. It’s no longer good enough to have technical skill in a world where a client can access a million freelancers online and hire based on price and need.
Yes, there are designers who can make your presentation look almost like Duarte, but there really is only one Duarte, and many people are willing to put their hands in their pockets because they want the genuine article.
Creative professions are in a state of flux as potential clients confuse price with value and technical skill with creative ability. If you want a presentation that’s ‘good enough’ then you can get one for less than two hundred bucks. Why wouldn’t you?
And that’s the nub of the dilemma facing creatives. Why wouldn’t your potential clients go to Elance or 99 designs instead? When everyone owns the means of production, what’s scarce? The obligation to demonstrate your value and to frame your scarcity is yours, not the clients’.
It’s up to you to become the one they seek out, not simply the someone they seek.
Creative success is not just about output, it’s about what people believe about you and the energy you and your particular presence brings to the project.
There is only one Johanna Basford, Jessica Hische and Nancy Duarte. No substitutes.
And every day they tell a story that gives people reasons to seek them out.
What story are you choosing to tell?
Image by Alper Cugan.
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Want To Make And Impact? Just Add Context
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
The path to success is littered with great ideas that don’t fly.
Even a good idea won’t catch on if people don’t see the value in it.
It’s not enough to have an idea that might change everything, you have to find a way to help people buy into it.
The truth is it doesn’t matter how good your idea is if nobody cares.
Here’s the equation.
IDEA + CONTEXT = IMPACT
The value is not in the innovation, the information, the platform or the app. The value is in the meaning it enables people to create for themselves.
So don’t just make, find ways to make people matter.
Image by Suizilla.
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Rethinking The Great Email Smash And Grab
The world has conditioned us from toddlerhood to understand that ‘most’ is what matters. Even a two year old instinctively knows that having just one more chocolate chip cookie than his sister is a good thing. Life teaches you that the people with the most win and so the quest for more begins pretty early on. It becomes part of how you operate, how you value yourself and keep score.
In business the quest for more has led to marketing without context. A kind of ‘great email smash and grab’ which has left us living in pop-up hell. The idea being that as long as you get the email address, the view, the like or retweet you’ve won.
The truth is that you never win if you try to make your work resonate with everyone. It turns out that ‘most’ isn’t the best measure of a more successful business or fulfilled life.
I know for a fact that headlines that promise to deliver ’10 steps to marketing success’ attract more eyeballs….but if hearts and minds is what you’re after, then a more eyeball strategy might not be the best one for you.
It’s far more important to reach out to the people who care, than to take aim at everyone.
Image by visitflanders.
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What If You’re Neither Closer, Faster Or Cheaper?
filed in Storytelling, Strategy
There was no size 12 in stock, but there were two identical black dresses showing on ‘the system’, one in the City store the other equally far away (but not there in reality as it turned out).
In a world of infinite choices where faster and cheaper is two clicks away, and free overnight shipping makes closer increasingly irrelevant, every business must question why people will pay for their services.
The Internet has given plenty of businesses the opportunity to become more relevant to their customers and it’s forced others to question what they are really offering beyond the thing that they wrap up for customers to take home.
The value of everything was always in the meaning and the story we told ourselves about having, owning or doing the thing, the Internet just brought that into sharp focus.
If you can’t add value in the moment then the only opportunity open to you is to add meaning.
What reason are you giving your customers to bypass a hundred (or maybe 100 million) other choices, to get in their car or to cross the street. Opening your doors (even if they are virtual ones) isn’t enough any more.
Image by Filippo Minelli.
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The Future Of Branding And Marketing
The great brands of the future, will be built by those who have worked hard to gain the insight that enables them to whisper “we see you” to their customers.
Shouting “notice us” just doesn’t cut it anymore.
Image by Palo.
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Intangibles Have A Real World Value
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
Once upon a time earphones were ‘functional black’, until Apple changed everything by adding a layer of meaning to what was once a commodity worth nothing more than a few dollars.
By making earphones ‘accessory white’ Apple gave iPod owners a way to be noticed and to belong.
The most famous roof line in the world brings in a billion dollars a year to the Australian economy. Those vaulted shells don’t make Sydney Opera House more functional, but they change how people feel when they stand in front of it. They deliver joy far beyond the cost of the concrete, wood and tiles used to build them. The shells enable us to attach meaning and significance to a building and give us a story to tell.
In the real world a disproportionate amount of value is placed on the tangible. Things we can easily explain, or put our finger on. Of course it’s easier to place a value on what can be weighed and measured. And yet all around us, every day we are surrounded by proof that ‘soft innovation’ and that which we can’t touch, or easily measure has a real world value.
Time and again the market proves that the value of stuff is finite, but that the meaning we attach to stuff, the experiences we create around it and the stories we tell ourselves about it has exponential value. The fortune, not the cookie is what people really care about.
Image by Ed Yourdon.
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Thinking Beyond Customer Needs
The couple at the cafe order two teas and one cake with two forks. The story the woman has told herself is that they are sharing the cake she ordered. Halving the damage. The guy quietly sips his tea as she slices the cake into squares and begins eating the smaller pieces, picking around the edges of the rest until she’s eaten the lot. The cafe owner might be happy of course, because he’s made a profit by catering to a need. But I don’t think the customer got what she really wanted.
Everyone who ever bought two, (or maybe five) pairs of glasses from Warby Parker knows that they only need one pair every two years, when their prescription runs out. They’re buying more glasses, more often because of the story they can tell themselves about co-ordinating looks.
And the 40% of customer who bought McDonalds milkshakes for breakfast weren’t just satisfying their unmet need, they were fulfilling an unspoken desire for a one-handed snack, that made their commute less boring and tided them over until lunchtime.
What your customer does, not what she thinks, or says she does leaves clues about what she really wants from you. Steve Jobs famously said, “A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.” Maybe the real truth is that people know what they want, they’re just not very good at articulating it.
The most successful brands don’t create products and services just for customer needs. They create for wants, desires, beliefs, behaviours and unexpressed worldviews. The same opportunity is open to you.
Image by Earle Hatsumi.
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Emotional Points Of Difference
Singapore’s Changi Airport doesn’t have the most runways (in fact it only has two), but it does have nature trail complete with sunflowers and butterflies. It’s also known as one of the best airports in the world.
The tiny bakery in Hastings on Hudson has a rolling pin for a door handle. Even before you set foot inside you’ve been given a clue about what to expect, and you know it will be nothing but good.
Packaging of household cleaners was traditionally clinical, Method made it beautiful.
And Apple elevated earphones from utilitarian objects to accessories, just by changing them from conventional black to white.
When you go the extra mile people will know, and that knowing changes everything about how they feel about what you do.
Emotional points of difference matter. They show people that you care. They mark out brands that stand for something, shape cultures and create followings of loyal customers and brand advocates that no amount of advertising can buy.
What’s your emotional point of difference?
Image by Steel Wool.