We’ve recently updated our identity, but the change is intended to be more transformative than a logo update. The first and best place to start is the name. Everyone asks about the name. “What’s Brave-Matters all about?” Well, what’s first and most important is that it invites you to ask. It’s memorable and despite the obvious perception of self-importance, the intent was to respect the very serious nature of making big, important business decisions. There’s nothing brave about making choices that lead to the same momentum and the same results. And there are no paths that are without risk. Every path offers pros and cons and risk that require judgment, leadership and courage.

Our original logo was meant to be accessible and unintimidating. In the beginning, the flag theme seemed like an unassuming “take charge” visual-counterpoint to the serious and prescriptive tone of the name.

After three years, the original identity felt disconnected from the way we presented ourselves and the transformation of our organization, our clients and the nature of our services. We’re dealing with serious stuff. Why diminish the importance of it?

What’s different? We’re different. Our approach to marketing is different. We work with a broad footprint that requires looking way beyond media and communications. We’re concerned with how an organization is holistically organized and optimized to serve their customers, beyond the media, beyond the communications. We’re here to protect what our customers have and improve their return on assets.

A flag? The concept felt much too lighthearted and might have even come across as a bit satirical.  So, after careful introspection and a comprehensive search for a metaphor, we found it hard to let go of a “shield” concept, despite our concerns that the visuals would be too unoriginal or too conservative. Thanks to Seth Rexilius @sethrexilius, we developed a modern shield identity and new brand artifacts that helped reinforce a more culturally-relevant value proposition.

When should you update your brand?

A successful brand strives to be relevant to its future market (its next dollar) and its history. That’s not an easy balancing act. A brand is being continuously steered and realigned. Just like evolution, it’s sometimes difficult to see the small changes and every once-in-a-while, you need to take big step to survive.

Social Marketing & B2B

According to 91% of B2B buyers, “word-of-mouth” is the most important influencing factor in the buying process. The growing importance of social marketing is a direct response to changing perceptions about traditional advertising. Traditional interruption techniques have trained consumers to increasingly tune out and to distrust corporate messaging.  As a result, buyers are turning to trusted social communities, experts and other influential voices to seek expertise and potential solution providers. B2B companies have responded. 86% of all B2B firms now utilize social media (source) alongside traditional marketing strategies. The investment in social media and interactive marketing for B2B firms is predicted to double between 2009 and 2012 to $4.8 billion. (Forrester Research).

“Word-of-mouth” is just code for Social Marketing. The only difference between networking and social prospecting is increased convenience, reach and relevance.

Prospecting through social networks

Social networks provide opportunities to identify prospects by location, segment, company and title. Individual prospects and conversations can be monitored for key terms related to your business and offer insights about customer values, needs and timing.

Gatekeepers and other communication barriers are minimized. A cold sales call might never be returned; however an invitation to connect or a link to a whitepaper or case study offers value without the intrusion of the traditional sales process.

Every online conversation and interaction can be monitored and measured so that your firm can improve the relevancy of content and the ability to respond with appropriate interactions when the client needs you most.

Reputation and credibility building

Providing relevant knowledge about your industry signals to your customers that your firm is innovative and prepared to solve any problem. Resident knowledge-leaders in your firm can demonstrate expertise by educating customers about your offerings, participating in social communities by authoring articles, blogging, responding to questions and offering insight about your industry. Knowledge-leaders in every industry are sought after advisers that pull inbound interest to your firm. In industries where products are increasingly easy-to-copy, know-how is your most important differentiator.

What people are saying about you can be measured. “Sentiment” is a measure of the overall opinion of your brand consisting of frequency and number of positive, neutral or negative comments. Sentiment can be a useful measure of your brand’s perception compared to that of your competitors and a useful evaluation of your firm’s credibility.

Enhancing customer relations

People buy from people they trust and companies that can effectively respond to their needs. Firms can demonstrate accessibility with public social profiles of support staff – available for immediate response to customer queries and convenience that exceeds that of a phone call. Social media can help firms demonstrate responsiveness to individual customer questions or those of their entire customer community. Furthermore, firms can improve the value of their offerings by inviting feedback from customers, thus accelerating the speed of product improvements and creating barriers to competitors that are less innovative or responsive.

The ability to interact with your customers through social channels can deepen relationships, demonstrate expertise and improve the awareness of your firm to shorten the sales cycle.

Social media is about more than gaining followers or stumping for “likes”; you should always focus on building a community of brand evangelists willing to participate in discourse about your brand not just with you, but with one another. This provides the opportunity to create a culture around your brand, partially by your management of the community and partially by the input and activity of the community’s members.

A major hang-up many companies can’t (or won’t) overcome is the necessity to relinquish your brand to users and consumers; the Old Ways of micro-managing interactions and relying on one-directional communication are still heavy in the minds of many business owners and brand managers, but the truth is that there’s an immense amount of liberation and growth to be found in releasing a brand to an interactive audience. An engaged community can provide market research and consumer feedback that, while lacking the scientific rigor of formal research, can nonetheless prove illuminating and valuable in shaping strategy. Moreover, a properly engaged community can become a valuable resource in directly contributing to brand growth through crowdsourcing.

As a natural extension of social media, crowdsourcing has become a colossal trend; worldwide brands have gotten hip to the fact that allowing consumers to determine their own degree of interaction stokes a considerable amount of brand loyalty and converts consumers into brand evangelists with relative ease.

Take, for instance, Mountain Dew’s incredible “Dewmocracy” campaign, where a year-long campaign relied on consumers to join a community and collaborate to develop three new, distinct Mountain Dew products all of which came to market; after a three-month period, consumers were again asked to vote online for their favorite flavor, which then became a permanent brand extension of the Mountain Dew product line. Customers were freely contributing creative capital to Mountain Dew projects; that’s something no amount of media buying can accomplish.

Outside the realm of consumer packaged goods, Facebook has become the platform of choice for Iceland’s constitutional overhaul. The country essentially cut-and-paste their previous constitution from Denmark in 1944 but following the 2008 economic crisis, leaders decided there was no time like the present to encourage their citizenry to mold the country’s primary document. Aside from Facebook, Iceland has built a Twitter account and YouTube channel to communicate with users and share information from the country’s constitutional council. This is an approach applicable particularly to NGOs, PVOs and NPOs, who need to offer meaningful engagement opportunities to activate online “slacktivists” that might otherwise fail to contribute or educate themselves on important political or social causes.

Websites like Kickstarter and IndieGoGo offer crowdsourcing vis-à-vis “crowdfunding,” allowing users to contribute money to user-created projects ranging from creative ventures to charitable causes; users can opt to fund films, novels, photography series, craftmakers, disaster relief efforts, musicians, comics, designers, dancers, consumer goods, food and much, much more. This concept takes the notion of a marketplace of ideas to a very tangible level and for some entrepreneur and business owners represents a very real opportunity to develop their own brands and community within that of another site.

Entertainment properties like Warner Bros. forthcoming sequel “The Dark Knight Rises” have also utilized social media innovation to increase awareness and participation; theirs is a campaign indicative of the level of involvement some communities will go for content. A page with nothing more than an audio loop launched the same day principal photography began on the film; intrepid fans found the page, downloaded the audio file and figured out by looking at the audio spectrum a Twitter hash tag – “#TheFireRises” – was embedded within. Word spread and it soon was discovered every time someone used that hash tag, each user’s profile image became a pixel of a larger mosaic to reveal a picture of one of the film’s characters. Massive publicity coverage plus community engagement in one fell swoop.

These are just a few incredible examples of what can be achieved when you harness a community through social media; it’s of the utmost importance to strategize how you’re not only going to attract new users but retain the users you’ve already collected. Better yet, how can you benefit from a massive crowd of customers gathered around your brand? Devising a means to convert social media users to customers – meaning sales, be it brick and mortar or e-commerce – as well as encouraging them to share your information and assets is the ultimate goal of social media. Once you’ve rounded up enough worker bees, you’ve simply got to be smart about turning them loose.

It’s no secret that social media outlets are becoming increasingly popular today as businesses vie for the attention and hard-earned loyalty of their customers. Maintaining a consistent presence within the social media realms has become vital to growth and positive public perception.

Content is obviously a critical component of social media prowess, but without good design to accompany and present the content, your effectiveness is limited.

A team of researchers recently conducted a study to find out how people interpret various websites. Lead researcher Elizabeth Sillence (School of Psychology and Sports Science, Northumbria University) asked participants to find websites related to health issues such as hypertension, then record whether or not they trusted the site and why.  The results: 83% of the people who said they distrusted a website cited design problems.

So what do we learn? A lack of professional and brand-appropriate design can cause distrust among viewers. Social media outlets provide companies an opportunity to extend the personality, tone and feel of their brand to new audiences in far-reaching ways. Maximizing those opportunities with solid design is critical to generating trust and creating positive associations between your customers and your brand. Good design will always supplement and enhance your content.

First impressions matter greatly, and the validity of your social media sites will inevitably be judged by how they look. So don’t let poor design detract from the message you hope to convey; instead allow good design to enhance it. Your audience is watching.

Here’s a lesson for everyone about differentiation.

An old maxim says “success is when preparation meets opportunity”; with the right approach and an understanding of your customers, it’s very much possible to penetrate your segment, capture mind-share and outdo your competitors with relative ease. The right tactics aren’t always expensive and, as we’ve seen before, the right story can tap into something greater than mere brand recognition.

Based in Austin, Alamo Drafthouse Cinemas is a relatively small chain of theaters with 10 locations, all but 1 of which are in Texas. Founded in 1997, Alamo Drafthouse Cinemas continues to compete with larger exhibitors such as Plano-based Cinemark (nearly 300 locations) and Kansas City-based AMC (nearly 400 locations) largely, in my estimation, because they work to cultivate and engage an audience of cineastes and casual moviegoers with special screenings, interactive events and an annual genre film festival on top of many general first-run releases.

They’ve crafted a brand that is hip, intelligent and interactive and certainly transcends the mere movie-going experience by speaking to a more communal, active opportunity to participate in quote-along and sing-along screenings, comedian commentary à la “Mystery Science Theater 3000,” cinema appreciation screenings with film historians and experts and even “HeckleVision,” where audience members can text their snarky comments and jokes to see them appear on the big screen in real time.

These unique offerings underscore Alamo Drafthouse Cinemas’ understanding of their audience and their audience’s culture; whereas most exhibitors offer nearly identical movie-going experiences, Alamo Drafthouse demonstrates a deeper knowledge of how to add value for their customers and differentiate themselves from their much-larger competition. A perfect example of this came just earlier this week.

There’s no question of the mounting pressure on theater chains; studio-backed Video-On-Demand, shifts in distribution windows, skyrocketing production and marketing costs, increases in ticket prices and an overall sluggish economy have contributed greatly to a decline in theater attendance. In 2010, North American box office sales were down 5% from the year prior; many consumers are opting to stay home citing the accessibility of streaming films as well as alluding to a sentiment expressed by Jean-Paul Sartre: “Hell is other people.” The cost of seeing a movie in-theater becomes exponentially higher when you throw in crying babies, ringing cell phones, row-illuminating text screens and all the general discomforts we’ve come to expect.

So when Alamo Drafthouse Cinemas uploaded this video to YouTube, it resonated with millions.

The policy of removing texting patrons from theaters may seem minute, but the reaction confirms Alamo Drafthouse Cinemas is responding to something important to moviegoers. Where your company’s values and the values of your consumers overlap is precisely where growth can occur; consumers now know that Alamo Drafthouse Cinemas is actively concerned in preserving a positive experience for their customers in a demonstrable way other chains are not.

Moreover, there’s a lesson here about social media and being engaged in the conversation with consumers. Many companies are still hesitant to delve into social media because they do not or cannot anticipate a means of coping with public criticism or challenges to their brand from customers; social media is seen as a liability that could mushroom into a PR nightmare. Well, that’s missing the point; even though a larger, more corporate chain might entirely disregard a voicemail like the one featured in the video, the shrewd move would be to utilize it to reflect your values.

No one is going to side with the angry consumer, after all – I’d wager you couldn’t find a single consumer who hasn’t had at least one bad experience with rude interruptions during a screening. Never forget that consumers are smart and fully capable of making their own judgments about claims, be it sour words on Yelp or Twitter. This is brand building through shared values and it helps catapult Alamo Drafthouse Cinemas into a category of their own. Do their competitors demonstrate his kind of personality or dedication to customer experience?

With the right approach, an angry consumer’s obscenity-laden rant has extended a culture to new audiences and invited many more from all over the world to participate; in less than a week, it’s already emblazoned on apparel and featured on countless media outlets from CNN to Reddit. The censored and uncensored YouTube videos are, of this writing, each over one million views. Reaction has been overwhelmingly positive.

Do you understand what sets you apart from your competition? Not just in your own eyes, but in the eyes of your customers? If you do, do you know how to communicate that?

I’m a little nerdy.  And I’m not afraid to admit it.  So I’m not afraid to admit that I spend quite a bit of time scouring obscure (not creepy, but just a bit obscure) websites for new and interesting stuff.  One of my favorites (although, not really obscure) is Springwise.com.  It’s been one I’ve visited daily for years now.  It’s always full of really unique and innovative business ideas and technology.

And the other day, I fell in love at first sight.

The IOWEU Project is based in India and is creating a unique cultural movement.  They’re combining new technologies, very old production techniques and storytelling in a way that is truly captivating and is really benefiting the world.

The brand sources all of its hand-woven fabrics from independent weavers all across India.  Using these fabrics, IOWEU crafts one-of-a kind clothing and accessories and sells them online.

What’s really interesting about this brand’s approach is that you can track each item of clothing’s journey- creation through purchase.  The story of each fabric and its crafter are captured with words and images.  As we journey through the site, we learn the history of each weaver, each artisan and in the end customer can contribute with their own story.

They’ve taken the storytelling aspect across multiple mediums.  At trunk shows held throughout the UK and India, customers can scan items QR codes and receive these stories via text message on their phone.

IOWEU is truly on the forefront of what every brand should be considering:

1.       How do we (as a company) help the world?

2.       How do we (as a company) become meaningful to our customers?

3.       How do we (as a company) give our customers something they will pass along?

4.       How do we use technology to bring it all together?

Don’t be afraid to share your story and don’t be afraid of using technology to do it.  We’ll see more and more companies take this approach to better connect with their customers and communities in the very near future.  Check the project out at www.iouproject.com.

Image Credit: http://iouproject.com

In late 2010, a study called the L2 Digital IQ Index for the Public Sector was issued by L2, a self-described digital innovation think tank; 100 public sector organizations were ranked according to their “digital competencies” in four categories: social media, website effectiveness, digital marketing and mobile.

At the top of their list? NASA.

So it turns out – well, unbeknownst to me, anyway – the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has been carrying out a considerably robust engagement initiative. Their dedicated landing page alone is an incredible point of entry for a colossal collection of content; you can connect with any of their 48 Twitter profiles or 28 Facebook profiles, download browser add-ons, RSVP for TweetUps, subscribe to their podcasts via iTunes, browse Flickr sets, watch SlideShare presentations or upload an image of yourself to be flown into space on the Space Shuttle Endeavor. Like I said, robust.

Yet despite the panoply of interactive opportunity, it wasn’t an official NASA channel or the coverage of astronaut Doug Wheelock checking into the International Space Station via FourSquare that made me reassess NASA as a brand. It was this video:

“The Frontier is Everywhere”

Narrated by famed cosmologist Carl Sagan himself (albeit via the audio book version of “Pale Blue Dot”), this video – just barely over 3 minutes long – spread like wildfire, garnering a quarter of a million views in mere days and, as of this writing, nearly 2 million views.

Small wonder. NASA’s message is irresistible and stirring; space exploration becomes intertwined with the human experience, the need to rally against adversity and unite for a purpose ultimately greater than the sum of its parts. It is an entirely different way for people to connect with NASA.

And yet, NASA had nothing to do with it.

It turns out this video – the first in an ongoing series named for Sagan – was produced entirely independent of NASA by a Canadian of the name of Reid Gower. He said, very simply:

“I got frustrated with NASA and made this video. NASA is the most fascinating, adventurous, epic institution ever devised by human beings, and their media sucks. Seriously. None of their brilliant scientists appear to know how to connect with the social media crowd, which is now more important than ever. In fact, NASA is an institution whose funding directly depends on how the public views them.

In NASA’s defense, they have embraced social media. I guess my point is that they don’t fully understand how to best use it. In all of their brilliance, NASA seems to have forgotten to share their hopes and dreams in a way the public can relate to, leaving one of humanity’s grandest projects with terrible PR and massive funding cuts.”

Want to understand what Gower’s talking about? See how much of NASA’s most viewed YouTube video (with about 875,000 views) you can slog through; titled “NASA Selects Target Crater for Lunar Impact of LCROSS Spacecraft” and at a little under 8 minutes, the largely silent video doesn’t exactly encourage a meaningful experience.

There are a lot of lessons here: the power of emotional appeal and brand clarity, the modern conversation loop that sees users contributing to brand growth and identity, the value of creating an experience rather than a show-and-tell and a reminder that no matter what level you or your business is on, there’s always room for refinement, enhancement and improvement. All with just a montage and a voice-over.

Gower himself has created opportunities to connect with the Sagan Series; you can follow him on Twitter, “like” the series on Facebook or upvote each installment on Reddit.

Most importantly, don’t be afraid to ask yourself what your product’s story is or how you’re creating value; you may not be able to tap into a species-wide predilection towards discovery, but emotional appeals are a great way to provide a means of user personalization and internalization. Branding is all about telling a story, and sometimes, making sure you’re telling the right story in the right way can make all the difference.

Design is thinking made visual. — Saul Bass

Graphic design is everywhere.  It’s on this page you’re reading right now, as well as every other website you’ll visit today. It’s on the windows of the shops and restaurants you’ll walk by during lunch. It’s on every book in your office. You see it on billboards, magazine ads , TV commercials, the clothes in your closet, the food packaging in your fridge and hundreds of other things, places, events and people you will come into contact with on a daily basis. Almost everything you look at has been through some sort of a design process, and has been arranged and developed in a way that is intended to reach and engage an audience. The reality of our day is this: graphic design infiltrates our daily routines in an inescapable way.

So what is it exactly? AIGA, the professional association for design, defines graphic design as a creative process that combines art and technology to communicate ideas. The designer works with a variety of communication tools, using imagery and typography, in order to convey a message from a client to a particular audience. It is visual communication manifested in countless forms, expressions, emotions and mediums.

So why does graphic design matter? In short, all design either positively or negatively affects the way your business is perceived by, well, everyone. It inevitably serves as the vehicle by which your message and story is conveyed to the watching world.  Good design empowers and enables the core values and underlying ambitions it’s created to represent. Every company has a story they wish to communicate to their audience. Properly developed design brings to life that story in a manner befitting audience engagement and creates a lasting impression. To underestimate the value this brings to your business can be stifling.

Design alone – or making something look nice – is not sufficient in itself. Content matters. When and where and how you use that content + design greatly influences your brand and requires strategic thinking, understanding your market, and the employment of a well-thought-out plan to engage your audience in a comprehensive manner. It’s inside this greater platform for your company that great graphic design thrives and enables.

Every piece of marketing material your business puts out is creating an impression on those who see it. The question is, are you maximizing that opportunity with your graphic design? Are you separating yourself from others in your field by the creative quality and craftsmanship of your material?

People will always be affected by graphic design; the arrangement of colors, pictures, words and space possesses a powerful ability to influence. The opportunity to impact your audience with creative design is always there. People are watching. What are you showing them?

Curiosity

Curiosity may have killed the cat, but the lack of curiosity can kill business.  Observing the world around you, with an open mind, is something many professionals have unlearned, but it’s something that we’re all born with. Basically, if you want to spot and understand trends, you can.

Understanding customer trends is critical to any business.  And trend tracking is easier than you might think.  Be curious and open minded.  You may be set in your own ways and have strict believes about what is right and what is wrong, but keeping an open mind is important in observing the world around you.  Ask yourself ‘why‘ whenever you notice something new, instead of immediately looking for shortcomings.

Also realize that you are not necessarily your customer and that what you care about probably isn’t the same as your customer.  You may not be excited about something new, but there might be others that are.  Try to figure out what makes others excited and why it is meaningful to that person.

In other words, think and act like a private investigator. How?

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A case for enabling your organization to take advantage of new technologies

10 years ago, it wouldn’t have been unreasonable to find companies that restricted email access to a select few key employees. You know, the ones who really needed access. And while we’re adding technologies to our list, we shouldn’t forget to mention mobile phones. Every decade, revolutions in technologies bring with them fear and restrictions – sometimes for perfectly sound reasons and at other times, for reasons that are completely irrational.

It would be unfair for us to judge those decisions by what we know now and especially because of how commonplace email and mobile phones are in everyday communications. And of course, we’re cherry picking the obvious, perhaps forgetting other technological innovations that might have been riskier.

However, considering the transformative power of emerging technologies and the speed by which they are released and effectively utilized, companies NEED to build processes and resources to evaluate how they can harness and enable their organization to take advantage of the opportunities, rather than wait.

We understand the formula for success, but not always the means. The companies that can build more effective relationships, identify prospects and influencers, provide better service and source new ideas for product innovations – all faster than the competition will just plain win. The risk of getting left behind is far too great to be too cautious.

10 reasons that companies are reluctant to evaluate social media

1. The perception that people are wasting time or it’s a purely personal endeavor
2. We’ve been successful so far without it
3. Lack of knowledge and unwillingness to invest resources to learn
4. Lack of executive or leadership sponsorship
5. Focus on one-way, advertising communications
6. Lack of perceived control of brand and messages
7. Culture that is uncomfortable with change
8. The perception of IT security risks
9. Concern about legal risks
10. Unwillingness to be transparent and accessible to customers

All of the above issues are by themselves not unreasonable considerations. Companies of all sizes need to have sound justification to embrace new strategies and should have practical understanding of their costs and ultimate value of the new direction to the organization. What I’m arguing for is for businesses to speed up the process by readying their organizations for change and enabling small teams – no,  “requiring” small teams to evaluate new technologies and address each of the above issues.

There’s just no excuse for sitting on the sidelines when there’s ample evidence for so much success.