The aesthetic of Evan’s paintings, for me at least, very much appeal to the designer in me. The importance and simple balance of minimal contrasting colors, shape and open space weigh heavily in his work. Some of my favorite prints of his are now, regrettably for me, sold out, but there are quite a few interesting images left on the Arkitip site. Perhaps it’s the restriction on color usage from the fact that these are prints that make for the simple beauty, but then again it’s the exercise of restraint that’s often key to wonderful creative works.
All available works at Arkitip: http://arkitip.com/printed-matter/hecox/
It’s critical for every business to spend some time between developing a business strategy and executing a marketing plan. Many people, myself included, call this “Brand Strategy”, but there’s other names for it. The important issue is to find out what makes you truly unique and irreplaceable to your customers, and the only way to really find this out is by having conversations and asking tough questions, both of yourself and your customers.
Here’s why it’s important to have a brand strategy before kicking off your marketing strategy:
1. Without a brand strategy you will have no aligned single “deeper truth” driving your marketing efforts beyond profitability or increasing shareholder value. This encourages short term thinking that diminishes the individuality of your business and makes you generic. The marketing strategy will be based more on the “now” and therefore the brand strategy should be rooted in the “always”.
2. You need a sounding board to validate constantly changing marketing efforts. When developing creative ideas and concepts, how do you validate these? By having a solid brand strategy you can weigh everything you do against that. Is this idea really us? See if it speaks to your brand. It will help you know whether your agency “gets you” and whether your sales teams are all saying the same thing. Put a stake in the ground and live by it.
2. Without a stake in the ground on your brand you are at constant risk of saying the wrong thing and therefore being the wrong thing to your customers, then you’ll need to triage, which is expensive. Do this enough no one will believe you. Choose your story and stick with it for the long run.
3. You need to find your “True North” for your business/brand. Once you understand how to articulate this, it will inspire fantastic creative execution, because everyone on your team will be working towards the same clear goal or destination. It will also make it easier and less costly to engage new team members/agencies, etc. By being able to articulate your unique value and position over and over, it becomes easier and easier to onboard team members and takes less time to get them onboard. Many companies stay with bad agencies simply because the time to onboard a new team is too costly and there never seems to be a good time for it.
What’s your true north?
I recently backed out of a project because I started to see analysis paralysis setting in, and this was at the planning stage! Very smart people with a lot of experience in the corporate world, good at navigating politics, good public speakers, but these skills don’t translate to the startup bootstrappers mentality. The goals were unattainable, the team too big, lack of laser focus and discipline, the kitchen sink mentality. All this project needed was a few people and some simple goals followed by some heads down hard work and a slightly scary soft launch to test consumer response.
Many people, myself included, self-loathingly praise themselves for perfectionism. But really it’s a procrastination tool of the highest level–An excuse to never get anything done, because it’s never, ever, quite good enough. If only I had realized this ten years ago! This is definitely a symptom of corporate management, where incremental safe steps are made in an environment where experimentation is translated into “risk of public failure and embarrassment”. The reality is you must risk failure at some point to get something done fast enough for it to move forward at a speed that you can afford. The faster you get it done, the less financial risk and the more opportunity you have to test in a live environment.
I think the concept of “Good to Great” is a little flawed. Not in the process but the outcome. Here’s the reality: The person who gets to market with their new brand/service/product is generally at a huge advantage. She’s got the turf on her side, and over time as everyone is catching up to her she’s also suddenly got the advantage of experience as well. While the other 5 people who had the same idea are “perfecting” their offering, the person who got it to “good” launched, built a community, developed a following, and got stuff done.
Plan it out, be sure the idea is sound, do your research and then get it done. Maybe skip the venture funding you think you need and self fund. Get it to market and get people using it, then test and improve as you go. I guarantee you can perfect it later, but be sure perfecting it now isn’t preventing you from even getting it done at all.
Steve Jobs’ landmark speech to a graduating class at Stanford in 2005 is something to go back and watch when I’m in need of inspiration.
Here’s what I take away from his speech…
Tell Emotional Stories
When you’re discussing your brand, your product, service, the thing you do-do, maybe just a story to your friends about conquering a section of the Appalachian Trail, make it emotional. Tap into the natural passion and emotion that comes from something you love–or is close to your heart–or caused you fear. If you find it hard to do this then you need to look short and hard at whether you believe in this thing. If you do it will be easy, if you don’t get out, move on, don’t force it. Find something you can tear your heart out for.
When You Love What You’re Doing Hardships Are Significantly Less Painful
Staying up all night to nail that inspired design? Haven’t eaten in 14 hours because you can’t tear yourself away from this awesome thing you’re so excited about finishing and sharing with the world/clients/friends/customers? It should feel like this. This is the secret that productive and successful people know, if it’s painful and feels like work, keep looking, it’s not your calling.
Typography Was One of Steve Job’s Original Intellectual and Artistic Inspirations
I giggled to myself when I saw this part of the talk again. We’re always talking about how good design is “good business”, it’s almost a cliche now to even say that. I’m guilty of throwing it into a presentation or proposal or two–But this is what defined the Mac’s inception. I love it. Jobs confidently describes the first Mac mission being to make the first computer with beautiful typography. All without the self loathing snarkiness of a seasoned designer who always knew this was huge.
You Can’t Connect the Dots Forwards Only Backwards
You must believe that the dots will connect down the road when you follow your heart. This is about intentionally directed naivete. This is about the secret to controlled coincidences, to riding a wave of connected successes. The business world frowns on idealism. You can’t optimize your life and professional process to the point where it’s perfect. Chaos is required for discovery. This is the tragedy of many growing organizations, they lose their idealism as their size (supposedly) demands structure and all is lost as they optimize free and tangential (read different) thinking out of the process. Hence the explosion of fantastically talented small agencies willing to take risks and are winning at it. God speed.
Don’t Love Objects or Things, Love the Process
There’s a lyric by Deep Purple in their song “Knocking at Your Door”, a high school favorite of mine, it goes:
“It’s not the kill, it’s the thrill of the chase…”
While I admit this song is about the reckless pursuit of the fiery carnal kind, it really sums it up. Love what you’re doing when you’re doing it, if you think the pain you’re experiencing now is a means to an end it will never end and this will haunt you, like a man on a treadmill snacking on cookies–because there is no end. You’re there right now. John Kabbat Zinn talks about this in his wonderful book “Wherever You Go, There You Are”. Focus on the “how” as much as the “what”. It’s important they both excite you.
Keep Looking, Don’t Settle Until You Find It
This is the easiest advice to hear and the hardest to follow. We as human beings are genius at our ability to rationalize ourselves out of any situation. We naturally want to tell ourselves our decisions and thinking is correct, so we do everything in our power to make it seem like we’re OK even when deep down inside we know something’s missing. Don’t settle, you’re too good.
Live Your Life Like Every Day is Your Last
This is advice I’ve heard before but love to ignore. When young the end is so far away. Have children and suddenly you’re thinking about this, but then we may dismiss it again. If today was going to be your last day, what would you do? Are you putting off something? I think about this now every night I put my daughter to sleep.
Don’t Be Trapped by Other People’s Dogma
You’re smart, your friends are smart. That doesn’t mean they’re right about you and the decisions you’re making or need to make. If it feels right to you, go for it. Why? Because the ideas that other people are telling you won’t succeed, are too weird, too difficult, too expensive, will freak out your investors, your boss, your lover–will likely be the ones that win. Zag, your ideas are the expressions of your original thinking and individuality. If you dumb down your ideas your dumbing yourself down, and for what? So that you can get some kind of pier consensus? We all know consensus thinking is generic. So don’t be generic, be different and don’t stress, in the end people want to be around the people daring and fearless enough to be themselves. If your friends and coworkers don’t support your crazy ideas because they don’t understand your thinking then hell yes, you’re probably onto something great. By the time they do get it, you’ll be succeeding at it while they realize they need to catch up.
Follow Your Heart And Intuition, Everything Else is Secondary
Your brain is very much like a computer. Your processor–your conscious mind, your hard drive–your subconscious mind. Your conscious mind often makes the decisions you should be letting your subconscious mind make. The giant relational database that is your subconscious mind will come to genius conclusions your conscious mind will fear, because the conscious mind is worried about the now, the how, the why, all the details that get in your way of just doing it. Listen to the fear, that which you fear is often the thing that you need to address most.
I’ll leave you with this quote from the end of the speech…
“Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there”.
This really struck a chord with me. Life is just a project timeline. You start and you finish. What’s the most important things to get done during this project? Start putting the things that are important to your brand, project, business, family on that timeline and you’ll start to see what’s important. Do those things and only those things.
Thanks Steve, glad to hear you’re going to be with us for a while longer.
I often send myself some notes through email to my phone to prepare for a first discussion with a client or potential client, and I thought I’d share this list I just sent myself today for a meeting. These are intended to give me a sense of both what makes any brand tick but also to what degree my client understands their own brand.
Please feel free to steal these and use for your own discussions. These are conversation starters so rephrase and reword these to fit your own discussion style.
Who are you? (Personality)
What do you do? (Cocktail conversation quicky)
What’s your vision? (define “wild” success)
What’s your mission? (how dare you getting to “wild success”)
What wave are you surfing? (social context?)
Who shares your brandscape? (competitive audit)
What makes you the “only”? (Positioning strategy?)
What should you subtract/Add? (Curate, curate)
Who loves you? (Tribe?)
Who’s your enemy? (Who is it fun to rally against?)
What do your customers call you? (In their words not yours)
How do you explain yourself? (What’s your value without “marketing speak” and acronyms)
How do you spread the word? (marketing strategy/execution?)
How do people engage with you? (integrated platform?)
What do/should they experience? (How do you want them to feel?)
How do you earn loyalty? (Building your tribe how?)
How do you extend success? (Where are you moving/how changing?)
How do you protect yourself? (Hoew do you defend your position? Innovate how?)
* Some of the wording here comes from Marty Neumeier’s outstanding books “Zag” and “The Brand Gap”. Get them read them.