57: Avoiding Brand Dissonance

For years, I’ve told my clients and prospects that I’m not trying to get 100% of their design work. Multiple auction marketers have heard me say, “Just bring me in on your big or showcase auctions.” Sovereignty has more than taken care of my workflow, and I prefer customers to find my work a good value than to be sold into something they can’t afford.

So, while that’s still my official invitation to auctioneers, I’ve been experiencing some internal dissonance regarding that position. From time to time, I’ll see different clients’ lower-end work or see local vendor ads for a national product or franchise that do not match the national campaigns or branding. (Car dealers and closeout stores are notorious for this.) They just don’t match. The logos are off; the fonts are unprofessional; the margins or spacing is inconsistent; the images haven’t been edited or presented for best presentation; information flows in a strange order. It’s as if their brand is schizophrenic.

I get it. Sometimes, we have to take small jobs to keep the lights aglow and phones ringing in the office. But we have to be careful our work doesn’t look cheap, or we’ll be needing that cheap work more and more—in lieu of the bigger transactions. We can cheapen our established, progressive brands by slapping our name on shoddy advertising, our signs in front of entry-level work.

Do you remember the Cadillac Cimmaron? Coming off the 1970’s oil crises and reacting to CAFE standards, the GM luxury brand thought it could grab more buyers by slapping leather seats and a Cadillac emblem on a Chevy Cavalier. Economy buyers saw past the badges; luxury buyers left the brand for upstart Japanese lines and proven European rivals. Reviewed as one of the 50 worst cars ever manufactured††, “[t]he Cimarron’s failure was part of a series of events throughout the 1980s and 1990s which eroded the brand’s share of the US market from 3.8% in 1979 to 2.2% in 1997[.]”†

Cadillac pretty much lost a generation of buyers by mixing its luxury brand image with cheap brand extension.

Cadillac’s hard lesson taught its competitors what not to do. Toyota has different locations and building designs for Lexus dealerships. BMW requires MINI franchisees to house both sales and service centers in separate buildings from its BMW models. Daimler sells it Smart Car units through Penske dealerships, not Mercedes ones.

So, it’s not so much about having an economy product or service. You just have to be careful about how those smaller sales reflect on the shiny deals you want people to assume are your standard.

You can create either separate divisions or companies, branding or color schemes—like corporate America does for different product lines. For about $2,000-$3,000, you should be able to obtain a professional logo, basic stationary, company brochures, and branded landing web page that can redirect after a short brand splash to an Auction Zip or Global Auction Guide auction calendar for your lower-end sales (instead of a whole new calendar site). Such brand differentiation has the potential to be as much of an investment in your priority brand as would be extra runs of your current high-end collateral.

If you can’t afford the time or resources to separate your markets or manage separate brands, you can raise the floor on the low-end look to make the differences in branding look less extreme. If some of your auction budgets require postcards, they should match your brochures. If your marketing plans can afford only black and white or two-ink brochures, they should be designed on the same templates as your color pieces.

If you have to go with smaller ads, create separate templates for those—not just shrunken or squished logos slammed in a corner below five-point text. Or use line ads (or small display ads without your logo), so that the graphical difference is less noticeable and associable. It’s pretty inexpensive to create different email templates, and changing a company or division name or a URL on a press release takes mere seconds. Your generic and directional signs should at least match your custom ones in color; font matching would be a professional, low-cost touch, too. Most web sites you use for marketing are universal in design; so, you’re okay there—especially since most don’t show your logo and branding, anyway.

Not every auction can be a a feather in your cap. But you have to be careful to limit the time your cap is collecting change on the sidewalk.
[tip]

Sometimes, my Mondays are crap. I mean, my Sundays and even some Friday nights are filled with spiritual highs and soul-level fulfillment, emotional connection and obedient surrender. Next to my valid resumé of Holy Spirit moments I drop a pile of self-worship, scorching unkindness, and primal depravity. It smells. It spoils and sours everything, even beautiful things. It can even ruin designated God environments. Stack enough of it, and it wafts doubt onto sure things.

From what I hear, this is common. Cultures around the world see it so much, they use it as evidence that all religions spring from the same contaminated fountain of human imagination, that the God deal isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. I mean, nobody likes hypocrites. Nobody craves inconsistency. Nobody wants to waste time on something that doesn’t truly do what it’s supposed to do. (Well, except for infomercial and QVC buyers.)

The way I reconcile that is to seek forgiveness vertically and horizontally, to repent and make a U-turn at this green arrow left lane—even if I might only make it a mile or two until I take the wrong exit again. And while it’d be better not to need stop lights, I can at least be thankful for them and use them as God intended.

[footer]†Flammang, James M., and Ron Kowalke: Standard Catalog of American Cars 1976-1999, page 149-189. Krause Publications, 1999.††Peters, Eric: Automotive Atrocities! The Cars We Love to Hate, pp.94-95. Motorbooks International, 2004.

Cadillac ad used with permission from ProductionCars.com

Image(s) used by permission through purchase from iStockPhoto.com ©2010[/footer]

47: Take Your Message to the Streets

For over a century, business owners have labeled their wagons and motorized vehicles with their respective companies’ names. For decades, precision painters scripted entrepreneurs names on the door of their trucks and vans. Decades later, vinyl lettering came along for faster, crisper installation of words and artwork. Then, a little over a decade ago, 3M perfected a product that could be wrapped around vehicles, expanding the advertising space to include almost the entire surface of a vehicle (I even have advertising on my roof).

Now, people can still get your dot com, phone number, and company name from those little white letters on your tailgate or rear window. But they could get more than information. They could get an idea of the kind of company you run, the culture of your staff, the type and value of the items or services that you sell.

With a vehicle wrap.

I recently had VSP Marketing Graphics Group of West Seneca, NY, transform my MINI Cooper with a vinyl wrap. [If you follow me on Twitter, you saw a live photo blog of the transformation process. I’ve also uploaded the pictures and process descriptions here.]

Already I’ve found several significant benefits stemming from this investment.

Brand Awareness
If your brand includes a modern logo and is well maintained across multiple media, a wrap will extend that professional image to people who would not otherwise interact with it. For a company looking for local or regional customers, there’s no medium as ubiquitous as public roads and parking lots. Due to a non-compete agreement with my local client, I wasn’t looking to gain local business from my MINI wrap. But in just the first couple weeks, I’ve had multiple inquiries about biplane from people looking at my car. biplane, a company run from a quiet-neighborhood basement, flew onto the radar of my community.

Wow Factor
I started designing cars when I was in junior high—aspired to that career in high school, when I drew over 500 vehicle designs. So, when the opportunity came to literally create the skin my sports car would wear, I spent well over a year mulling artistic elements. But that design time is atypical in the vinyl wrap industry, and the finished product matches biplane’s brand image and stands out in traffic. I’ve literally seen heads turn and people point at it. You can’t miss the vehicle, which means people can’t miss your advertising. It makes a three-dimensional, moving impression. In traffic, you become the visual exception—the unexpected and colorful image that gets remembered.

Cost Value
Your vehicle presents a large canvas—probably much larger than my MINI. At a national average of $15-$25 per square foot (including installation), you can’t ask for a better value in visual promotion. A typical wrap lasts 3-4 years. So, your one-time expense can end up costing you less than 48¢ per thousand viewers. Try that in newsprint, television, or direct mail!

Tax Benefit
In my case, wrapping my MINI allowed my personal vehicle to count as a business expense. Should I use this wrap for three years, as planned, the tax benefit should be roughly ten times the cost of the wrap. Consult your accountant and your auto insurer, but you may be able to turn one or more of your personal vehicles into mobile signs—with a net gain on your taxable income.

In advertising, we’re constantly confronted with upgrade choices like black-and-white versus color, postcards versus brochures, or line ads versus display ones. Strategic choices of where to upgrade and how much can accelerate or decelerate your brand’s growth in the marketplace. But a vehicle wrap should be a no-brainer. It’s the best value in corporate promotion and constantly introduces your company to new potential customers who wouldn’t know of you from any other medium.
[tip]

As holiness grows in you, sinful habits and negative influences will shed from your life. But sanctification doesn’t mean perfection or demur asceticism. It means “set apart,” something different than secularism and the world Satan has fogged with deceit. Some Christians take this concept as an excuse to hide from culture, to avoid interaction with the secular—except on the church’s terms or in cold-call canvassing.

From my experience, especially here in the Bible Belt, people want something different than both the dark realities of their habitat and the plastic facade of America’s church culture. But they want the difference to be authentic, not manufactured—inspiring, not entertaining.

If we live from the core of who we are (and who we’re becoming), God can use our personalities, interests, talents, and perspective for Kingdom benefit. So, rather than hide behind some clichés and coverups, we need to catch those who watch us off guard with our response to life—standing apart from the rat race, the status quo, even the American Dream. When we wrap our outside with what God is bubbling on the inside, we can pull out into life’s traffic and expect heads to turn. We can then redirect them to “turn [their] eyes upon Jesus; look full in his wonderful face. And the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace.”

24: Can a Recession Help Your Brand?

I spoke with a real estate broker whose local market took a hit before the national real estate market famously slowed. In an area that two or three years earlier had seen building moratoriums and upwards of 30% annual appreciation, home prices fell at well-into double digit percentages. As a result, roughly 50% of real estate agents in his county did not renew their licenses. The downturn got rid of half of his competition in one year.

During a boom time, lots of people jump into your competition pool—trying to glean from the flux of business. In a recession, your industry has to share fewer transactions. The Darwinian nature of capitalism tends to sift your weaker competition from the herd. The buying public’s attention is left to focus on the stronger players still in the game, players like you. Economic lulls can be a great time to establish and even grow your brand—your company’s public perception—and not just by attrition.

During a slump, consumers grow more careful in their purchasing decisions, as costs and mistakes are more difficult to absorb. So, value grows in importance. The value associated with your brand will separate you from the pack faster during a recession than in a boom period.

Here’s an example as close as my driveway: six months into 2008, MINI sales rose 33.3%, while BMW (MINI’s manufacturing big brother) sales dropped 8.7%.

“‘The last three months have been the best in our history as the significant structural shift to small cars has brought into our dealerships a diverse range of vehicle owners that currently drive large cars, SUVs and trucks. Our retailers tell us these people recognize the combination of efficiency, great dynamics and premium values MINI provides and it allows them to downsize their vehicle without downsizing their aspirations,’ said Jim McDowell, Vice-President MINI USA.”†

(Lest you to doubt my objective research, know that Honda—a manufacturer whose lineup contains far fewer trucks and large SUV’s than their slumping competition’s lines—saw their sales rise 8.5% domestically in the first half of 2008.††)

MINI Coopers are expensive compared to cars of similar size and fuel economy. But their value appears much higher due to intentional selection of amenities and the consistent, targeted marketing of the brand (and the rising cost of gas).

So, I’m not telling you to charge less for your services. biplane productions isn’t; and it’s seen an increase in auctions to advertise over (a record) 2007, year-to-date.

You’ve just got to prove you’re worth your price—regardless of your price. What do you do that’s different than your industry’s standard? What don’t you do, that most of your professional peers are wasting time, energy, and resources to offer? Tout both. Illustrate your track record or services with comparison charts, easy-to-read graphs, and referral quotations in your proposals and marketing. Show the towns, counties, and/or states you have served with a map. If you have the data, illustrate your company’s reach by exhibiting where your customers or web visitors call home.

While your competitors are cutting their marketing, their presentation, and their support staff, their brand recognition in the marketplace drops. Even if you must scale down your company promotion—or direct it to a smaller, more targeted public—your dedication to a consistent, corporate image will build residual advantage, regardless of economic conditions. If you can establish yourself as the value brand in your market during a recession, you will accelerate into the growth periods faster than my MINI does out of a clover leaf ramp.

Well, almost.

——–

[footer]† July 1, 2008. www.autonews24h.com,”Auto News : Auto Industry : BMW : BMW USA Reports June Sales”[/footer]
[footer]†† July 29, 2008. www.world.honda.com, “Honda Sets 10th Straight All-Time Record for Worldwide Auto Production in First Six Months”[/footer]

[tip]

It’s said that humans only need God in hospitals, funerals, and fox holes—as if he’s a crutch (or at least a vehicle) for hoping and coping. For some, that may be true. For the true follower of Christ, it’s about a dynamic, everyday relationship with a good friend. That sounds like Pollyanna hyperbole or televangelist crap to many, and it’s hard to explain in concrete, empirical terms.

Some days it’s like your church and your God know you better than you do, energize you better than anything else, and empower you to live life the way you dreamed. Some days life sucks. And on some of those days, church doesn’t cut it; and only your private conversations with Heaven and heaven-sent friends prove cathartic.

Life cycles in various sine waves, just as the economy does in a free market system. People who don’t walk intimately with Jesus want to see in the people who do something different when the days are gray, the results are black, and the bottom line is red. It’s hope. It’s joy. It’s that peace you can’t explain—not confidence in the outcome going your way but that God will somehow hug you and sit next to you regardless—that he loves you and has the best in mind for you.

When you take that realization into the good times, you’ll feel his presence in amazing ways.

[footer]Stock image(s) used by permission through purchase from iStockPhoto.com ©2010.[/footer]

13: Got a Milk Mustache?

Nothing builds brand recognition faster than consistency.

Not even repetition.

If the viewing public doesn’t see the same branding presented the same way, multiple views actually detract from brand establishment and growth. An internal dissonance builds and distracts from your message and image.

Brand management, as it is called, proves more than just using the same logo or having a company color. The design of your advertising should stand as recognizable as your logo.

You know you’ve seen a Milk Marketing Association’s “got milk?” ad, even before you spot the famous logo tag line. While their ads have looked the same for over a decade, they still capture your attention. Same goes for Absolut vodka and Corona, Best Buy and Target, Comcast and Verizon, MasterCard and MINI. All of these ooze creative, memorable images without sacrificing uniformity.

This is the whole reason why franchises can open new stores or restaurants with faster traffic gains than a mom-n-pop opening a new place in a new town. Consistent branding and predictable product create trust as customers order new things or visit new locations. They know what to expect. It goes deeper than marketing, but branding begins that process.

Whether you use a Madison Avenue advertising firm or a local college kid, you can accomplish brand retention by developing a style sheet. Larger auction companies like tranzon and United Country and others have given me style sheets for projects with their affiliates. This includes information such as: official colors [expressed as “PMS numbers”], logo versions and sizes for specific media, font names and usage [terms including “x height,” “kerning,” and “leading”], spacing, line thickness, and other significant—though seemingly small—guidelines.

You don’t have to know what all that means, but you should have it recorded all in one place. This way, no matter who does your design work, you have a consistency safety net. While I recommend using the same vendor as much as possible (whether biplane or not), this can keep internal or vendor transitions from being as noticeable to the public.

Most of all, brand management will help the public absorb and remember your brand quickly—probably faster than your competitor, who thinks their options are pricey agencies or newspaper comp room trainees.

So, let this be our little secret. You can thank me later.
[tip]

The number one knock on the American Christian and our evangelical churches is hypocrisy. I can’t say I disagree with the sentiment. The longer I’ve lived in the Bible Belt, the more I’ve seen people for whom church is a social engagement or weekly car wash.

The primary way to communicate Christ to culture is through love. Second to that is consistency. Satan knows this. That’s why he works harder on those in the church than those outside of it. He turns holiness into prejudice, passion into faction, failure into duplicity.

Too many believers think they have to impress the secular with goodness or godliness. Pastors can get like this in front of their congregation; laity can get that way in front of their neighbors. Like a Hollywood celebrity, they’re just building the scandal for the next time they trip.

I’ve found that being candid inoculates a lot of that. “Hey, I just messed up. That wasn’t very Christian of me. I’m sorry.” The realness can trump the failure; the honesty can diffuse the impression of hypocrisy. In the end, God can use even our sin to reach people for him.