7-Eleven's new energy coffee

I stopped into 7-Eleven on my way into the office this morning to grab a coffee. As I'm looking for the pot of dark roast, I see a bright yellow handled pot. Ok, black coffee in a see-through pot with a yellow handle...yellow and black--CAUTION: Hazardous materials!!!

That is the first thing that came to my mind.

After further review, I learn that it's their new energy coffee. Hmm. Still a little rattled by the choice of promotional colors, I'm wondering if this is the stuff they drink in the San Francisco Giants' clubhouse--shipped directly from BALCO.

After even further review, the signage says the energy coffee is "Powered by ginseng, guarana and yerba mate." On top of that, the pictured cup has a yellow glow surrounding it. I revert back to my fear of getting radiation poisoning from standing next to this thing for too long.

I go for the dark roast.

7-Eleven has great coffee. It's underrated. If there's a Starbucks and a 7-Eleven within walking distance, I'm going to the latter. It has better coffee and it sure as hell has better cups and lids...7-Eleven all day long.

But what happened when they went to brand this new energy coffee? They should have taken a page out of Starbucks' branding program. The colors, the feeling...it's all wrong.

Adobe's Kuler tool

Color plays such an important role in branding and corporate identity. With the release of Create Suite 3, Adobe also introduces this really cool website community of color palettes called kuler. Enter your company's color palette and see how it ranks.

Style Guides: Enforcing the guidelines

Like any set of rules or guidelines you can't shove 'em down people's throats. It's no different when trying to build support for your company's identity standards.

The most important thing about a branding strategy is internal acceptance of the program. If nobody likes it or, even worse, gets behind it, it will fail. With that said, design is deeply subjective. Not everyone is going to be thrilled with the firm's color palette. You're going to have people who won't quickly warm up to the logo or typeface used. Just as your creative team designed these materials in the best interest of what the company needs and not what they like, the same holds true for the staff.

Prior to launching any branding strategy or corporate identity program there must be an education from within. Your style guide provides the bulk of that teaching. We've seen many style guides lay down the law in a few quick pages. Do this...don't do that...you must adhere to this...you can't take liberties with this...etc. Why? Everyone who plays an active role is going to want to know why? Why can't I use Times New Roman even though the style guide strictly calls for Goudy Old Style? We all know that answer, right?

While the style guide is a road map on how to achieve visual consistency, it can also play a larger, more global role in your company's culture. It should make your team feel good about its branding strategy and it should reflect visual what it is saying verbally. By taking this design aspect into consideration it is much easier for company-wide buy in and enforcement of your identity's rules and restrictions.

Deep down, employees want to be involved in what makes up and strengthens the company's brand and culture. However, if it's too hard to follow, doesn't make sense, or is enforced without explanation, it probably doesn't stand a chance.

This is the third in a series of posts that I'll be writing about style guides. In the future, I'll be talking about more specifics including:

--The recipe for a successful corporate ID
--What should be included in your style guide?
--Properly enforcing the guidelines
--How often it should be updated?
--Who should be using it?
--It's not just a manual

New recycled paper?

We were just talking to a client today about the many varieties and grades of recycled paper. Here's a new one.

The importance of media management for your brand

Think about all the news sources you have at your disposal today. Now think about what it was like 10-15 years ago. Back then you had your daily newspaper, the evening local and national news, weekly news magazines and that was about it.

But now your weekly news publications like Time and Newsweek deliver information as soon as it comes out. Add to that all the new news sources that compete to get it first.

Unfortunately, this need to be first is oftentimes more of a priority than being right.

Having a solid PR strategy and professional in your corner to manage the information that comes out of your company is extremely important in protecting your brand. You say, "Oh, there's nothing bad or negative to report on my company. I have nothing to worry about..."

Seth Godin points out in his blog how this inaccurate information gets out there--from Elizabeth Edwards announcement that her cancer returned and her husband was going to bow out of the presidential race to the rats at your local KFC.

By not reporting the right information the first time, think about how it can hurt your company's brand, your presidential campaign or your fast food business. Not good for you, but fine for media company that can simply cut and paste in the updated news story.

At the end of the day the accountability falls on you rather than the media to make sure the information they report is accurate. You see it everyday. I'm certainly no media superstar, but the few occasions that my name or quotes have been included in a story, it's amazing how many times the reporter got it wrong. Wrong quotes, wrong context, wrong spelling of my name. Fortunately, it wasn't a big deal, but it could have been.

It's amazing, but as a business owner you must be prepared to deal with the mistakes of the media. You'll love the media attention you get if they get it right. If it's wrong, what do you do now?

Hospital Branding: Fear vs. Emotion

James Briggs has an excellent column in this week's Oakland Business Review about hospital marketing. The column doesn't appear online, but check it out in this week's print edition.

I've often felt that Beaumont used fear in its advertising campaign "Do you have a Beaumont Doctor"? I always thought that type of advertising was akin to companies that preyed on senior citizens through sweepstakes and other nonsense.

On the flip side, Briggs talks about St. John Health's new campaign that takes a higher road and focuses on the spriritual and emotional side of health care. I look forward to seeing St. John's campaign and will continue to chuckle every time I hear the deep-voiced narrator asking if I have a Beaumont doctor while the heartbeat sound effect pounds in the background.

Resurrecting a dead brand

About a month ago we posted about the return of the Taurus. Slate has an interesting article asking why companies kill brands only to resurrect them.

R2D2 it is you...it IS you!

Have you seen the R2D2 mailbox wraps? The US Post Office has launched a new teaser campaign that will be unveiled on March 28.

At first I was stunned to see the R2 unit mailbox outside our office and wondered what it was all about. Then I got to thinking, R2D2 has to be the most important mailman in the galaxy. After all, he delivered Princess Leia's message to Ben Kenobi and then got the Death Star plans safely in the hands of the Rebel Alliance.

Hopefully this is more than just a series of collectible Star Wars stamps.

Who's Your Tiger?

Opening Day isn't far away and there's a buzz around here unlike anything we've seen during Spring Training in nearly 20 years.

The Detroit Tigers' run to the World Series last year was awesome. It brought back memories of the magical 1984 season, but also had the suspense and drama of the September of '87. Baseball was finally back in Detroit, but there was something else that was refreshing and pure about the somewhat surprising 2006 season.

There wasn't any hype or crazy expectations going into the season. We had no trailer, no slogan to get behind. Sure, Jim Leyland replaced Alan Trammell, but nobody thought it would matter as much as it did. It was pure excitement on a daily basis--once we realized somewhere around the All-Star break that this team was for real.

It came down to winning, getting into the playoffs, beating the Yankees and A's, then getting to the World Series. The team's success had nothing to do with any marketing campaign, giveaways or between-inning shenanigans. It was baseball.

I'm often amused by the attempts teams make at filling their seats by assembling a solid team in the marketing department rather than on the field.

It never works. Logo and uniform changes never make teams better. Slogans don't do it either. I saw the White Sox unveiled a new tagline during the Winter. This team won the World Series two years ago and this season they're making a big deal about a slogan? Why?

Because they're trying. Trying to hit a marketing home run like the Tigers have. For the past couple of years the Tigers have had a simple and unique advertising campaign that accomplished a balance rare in sports marketing--it was in your face but never annoying.

"Who's Your Tiger?

It's catchy and even my 3-year-old son would growl "Who's Your Tiger" throughout the season.

What I think makes this campaign successful is the fact that it didn't try to make the team seem any better than it was. What it did do was make the players seem more accessible to the fans. "Who's your Tiger" takes us back to the days when you could have a favorite player on your favorite team and not fear he's going to become a free agent and sign with another team. It appears that team is going to continue using this campaign. Of course, they're going to sell the fact that they're the defending American League champs, and they should.

Over the next couple weeks we'll take a look at Detroit's three other pro sports teams and see how they stack up in the marketing and creative department.

Style Guides: What should be included?

Hand someone a 200-page user guide and they'll most likely ignore it. Give them something that is easy to flip through and you're going to more likely see the thing used rather than shoved in the bottom of a drawer.

There's no page limit on a corporate style guide, but there are certain things that are extremely necessary. Depending on your company, your people and the various backgrounds of those in charge of the company's identity, you will want a style and design manual that is right for you.

Smaller companies may only need usage guidelines for the corporate logo and the organization's corporate identity program, including brochures, business stationery and website look and feel.

However, companies with a larger number of employees are exposed to a heightened risk that its corporate identity could be compromised. If there are multiple offices across the country or globe, how do you ensure consistency in every communication tool created by various agencies and marketing departments? The answer, a detailed style guide.

These comprehensive manuals include elaborate description of the firm's communication tone and serves as a sort of internal marketing brochure. Short of telling people how to talk and dress, a style guide can give key talking points and boilerplate text for use in written communications.

There is so much that can go wrong when a costly identity program gets into the wrong hands. A branding strategy and corporate ID strategy shouldn't be left up for discussion and interpretation. Once it's implemented, it must remain consistent. It may be obvious, but that means that Jamie in HR can't use Pantone 5464 when the style guide strictly calls for Pantone 163. It also means you can't bunk up the logo with other icons or visuals. It's amazing, but we see it all the time...logos squeezed into a space they don't belong, or a typeface used that appears to be "close enough."

If this sounds like your company, your style guide probably needs to be more detailed and enforced.

Some other things to consider including in your style guide are: specific colors, letter layout, signage guidelines, do's and don't's of logo placement and communication etiquette.

Basically if there's a breakdown in visual or verbal marketing communication from within your company, it should be addressed in the style guide.


This is the second in a series of posts that I'll be writing about style guides. In the future, I'll be talking about more specifics including:

--The recipe for a successful corporate ID
--What should be included in your style guide?
--Properly enforcing the guidelines
--How often it should be updated?
--Who should be using it?
--It's not just a manual

Identity and Design Style Guides: The recipe for a successful corporate ID

Why is your corporate style guide so important? Consider the following fictional story that you may not find all that fictional.

Suppose you went to a great restaurant about a year ago. You don't go there often because it's a little farther than you'd like to normally drive. The reason you go? The fish and chips special. It was Lent, it was Friday and a friend told you how great the fried fish was at this particular restaurant.

Flash forward to today. It's Lent again. Tomorrow's Friday and your mouth is watering for that fish. You pack up the family and head out to the restaurant. You can just taste that fish. You order. You can smell it. You can taste it. The server brings it out and...it looks totally different. Worse yet, it doesn't taste the same. It's not bad, but it's certainly not the same fish as last year. You waited all year for that Lenten visit to this restaurant and now it's all different. It's not bad fish. It's not like you can really send it back and have them fix it. In fact it's quite edible and you eat it thinking I could have had fish that was just as good at the church fish fry down the street.

What happened to the consistency at that restaurant? Was there a new cook? Was it even cod? New batter? Were the fryers not set to the right temperature? Why was the fish so different from the same restaurant with the same name and friendly staff as a year ago?

Perhaps there's a very good reason for the change in taste. Maybe the restaurant took a survey of it's customers and the majority of them preferred it this way. If that's the case, unfortunately, you didn't get to vote!

A lack of consistency kills good restaurants just as quickly as low profit margins.

Whether you own a restaurant or a professional service business, your customers expect consistency in everything you do--from the reports you generate to the use of your corporate identity. They also expect it in your company's visual appearance. This is where your corporate style guide and identity manual comes into play.

Like a restaurant, your business oftentimes has more than "one cook in the kitchen." How do you make sure they are all on the same page? What happens when the marketing department is printing brochures and the HR department is creating business cards? If there isn't a recipe to follow how do you ensure consistency across all communications? You can't!

A style guide doesn't just reinforce the importance of not manipulating your company's logo, it provides a road map to developing and maintaining your entire communications, branding and marketing plan.

Do you have a style guide? Is someone or, better yet, something policing your company's identity program?

This is the first in a series of posts that I'll be writing about style guides. In the future, I'll be talking about more specifics including:

--What should be included in your style guide?
--Properly enforcing the guidelines
--How often it should be updated?
--Who should be using it?
--It's not just a manual

Does your business...

...have its own personality? What is it? How was it created? Is it the personality you want your customers to see? Your personality is an important part of your unique brand. Can it be changed? Not easily. That's why it's important to protect and nurture it from the very beginnings of your company--even before your company was a company. You can't go out and just turn on a "personality switch."

Comerica leaves...local banks must take advantage

All the news this past week has revolved around Comerica Bank moving its headquarters out of Detroit. It's sad, but it's also an opportunity for smaller, local banks to grab some of that market share while the wounds are still fresh.

It's time for the Flagstars, Fifth Thirds and Paramounts out there to strengthen their local, community-focused branding strategies and grab those new customers. In recent years banks have been touting how they're individually different from other banks. Unfortunately, they haven't shown it. Remember, your brand is what your customer feels, not what you say it is.

What a great opportunity for some of these other smaller institutions to make a bigger name for themselves. It will be interesting to see if they just talk a big game or if they actually go out and do something about it.

DBusiness Magazine. It's great!

In the past there's never been a really good local business publication. Crain's Detroit is great for weekly business news and does a fine job where the local dailies don't, but until now, there hadn't been a slick feature-oriented monthly magazine that really stood out. If you haven't seen it, check out DBusiness. It's published by the same folks who've had great success with Hour Detroit.

There are well-written and interesting features on local business people and companies. Check it out, the magazine's editor, R.J. King, and his staff have done an outstanding job with the first few issues.

Does your business...

...work in an industry that sometimes has a bad reputation? Think for example, trial lawyers being referred to as ambulance chasers. How do you deal with this negative perception? Do you just live with it, or do you constantly look for ways to change and improve that "gut feeling" from the inside out?

Think about and be aware of the negatives that people may be saying not necessarily about you, but of your industry.

SOZO | Pivotal to participate in BBCC's LEAP workshop

SOZO | Pivotal is participating in tomorrow's LEAP Workshop on marketing. Kimberly Leclercq and Dave Klonke will briefly talk about branding and how it fits into the big picture of a company's marketing program. To attend the workshop register at the Birmingham Bloomfield Chamber website bbcc.com or call 248-644-1700.

EVENT INFORMATION:
March 8 - LEAP - Leading Entrepreneurs Advocate Progress
7:30 - 9:30 a.m.
Huntington Bank 801 W. Big Beaver, Troy
Topic: Marketing
LEAP is a quarterly educational series hosted by the Birmingham Bloomfield Chamber. At each forum a small business topic will be presented by an “expert/facilitator” in that particular field/industry. The forum attendees will be asked to discuss the topic: the challenges, the successes, brainstorm ideas for solutions.
Register online or call the Chamber at (248) 644-1700

SOZO | Pivotal re-launches Audience Analysis website

ROYAL OAK — SOZO | Pivotal, a branding and identity design company, has recently redesigned and launched its Audience Analysis website at www.spaudienceanalysis.com. The new site allows SOZO | Pivotal to streamline its database and provide a better interface in which to attract participants.

The Audience Analysis website serves as a base testing platform to monitor and analyze the effectiveness and potential ongoing success of the branding campaigns created by SOZO | Pivotal.

As the branding strategy is developed, Audience Analysis allows SOZO | Pivotal to test design and corporate identity concepts against a comprehensive database consisting of everyday business professionals and consumers that makeup a company’s target audience. SOZO | Pivotal uses the information gathered from these tests to make decisions and implement any necessary changes to proposes branding strategy.

“You can’t underestimate the target audience,” says Dave Klonke, principal at SOZO | Pivotal. “It’s too late to test a new branding strategy or corporate identity after the brochures have been printed. Before it’s revealed to the target audience, feedback from our analysis is studied to ensure the ongoing effectiveness of the overall brand strategy.

SOZO | Pivotal helps businesses identify and leverage their unique brand position by developing strategies, creative programs and tools that foster consistent verbal and visual messages. The firm works with clients in a number of industries including manufacturing, professional services, sports and entertainment, restaurant, hospitality, franchise and retail. To learn more about SOZO | Pivotal, visit its website at www.sozopivotal.com. SOZO | Pivotal also recently launched its business and branding blog at www.doesyourbusiness.com.

(Product) Red in the red?

Advertising Age reports on the meager $18 million raised to date for the Global Fund by (Product) Red. What's so meager about $18 million, you say?

Nothing. But some watchdogs are apparently giving the organization heat for the disproportionate ratio between marketing dollars spent and the actual funds raised.

This is the uneasy and precarious position companies often find themselves in when they embark on cause marketing initiatives. Does it have the best intentions or is it simply about profits?

Why can't it be both? Why can't U2's Bono, who co-founded Red, and other supporters be praised for their efforts rather than scrutinized? And why can't a company like Apple, Gap or Motorola see some profits in the effort while, according to the Ad Age article, the Global Fund has seen $13 million more from Red than they had received from all private sector donations between 2002 and 2005.

Do the people opposing this realize that (Product) Red is everywhere thanks to what some reports indicate has been nearly $100 million spent in marketing? The marketing quickly builds awareness of these initiatives. On top of that, everyone is wearing, talking into and listening to these new Red products.

Nonprofit activist Mark Rosenman told Ad Age, "There is a broadening concern that business is taking on the patina of philanthropy and crowding out philanthropic activity and even substituting for it. It benefits the for-profit partners much more than the charitable causes."

So what am I missing here? Popular brands partnering with charitable causes is a bad thing? Perhaps it's the perfect connection that brings awareness to people who may not have otherwise even heard of the Global Fund or its mission. Even the folks at buylesscrap.org are contradicting themselves when they parody and denounce the Red campaign. Thanks to Red and the large brands involved these people have a louder voice and subsequently will get people to donate directly. Go figure that one out. Sounds like a great win-win to me.

D.O.C.'s Richard Golden reinvents approach to marketing eyeglasses

If you grew up in the metro Detroit area there are a few local advertising personalities that stick out in your mind. The most prominent icon has to be Richard Golden of "Sexy Specs" and D.O.C. fame.

You may think his commercials and ubiquitous presence on your TV screen was cheesy but you can't argue its success. After all, D.O.C. was everywhere and extremely well branded. They sold glasses to the masses and last week they sold the chain for $110 million according to this week's Crain's Detroit Business. That kind of coin makes Golden's approach to hollering at you through the TV, dressing up in leather and awkwardly dancing around motorcycles look pretty smart.

Now Golden focuses on Selective Eyewear Elements or "SEE"--a newer concept with an entirely different approach to marketing. He won't be dancing, but instead he'll be approaching a more targeted, fashion-conscious audience. He'll be utilizing strategies and relationships with national causes to position SEE to its target audience. This reinvention is what could really prove his worth as an excellent marketer and brander.

Lining up with causes seems to be the latest trend in branding. Think Product(Red). I just hope the companies that take this approach are sincere. It will be interesting to see how SEE does.

You have to give Golden credit for reinventing his niche in the industry. He was the visual spokesman of D.O.C. for over 20 years. His father founded the company and it has to be extremely hard to sell a company and focus on a new business in the same industry. So much of branding is about emotion, but when you can take the emotion out of your branding strategy you're headed in the right direction.

The blog gets some updates!

We try to continuously update and make this blog easier to utilize for our readers. As you will notice in the right-hand column, we have added the ability for you to subscribe to the "Does Your Business" blog via RSS or e-mail. We hope you enjoy reading this blog as much as we enjoy writing the articles and creating the content. Thanks!

Does your business...

...steal its own clients?

Way to go Faygo

Happy 100th Anniversary Faygo! It really feels good to see a local company celebrating a century of business--especially in these nasty economic times.

Red Pop and Rock & Rye anchor the 40-plus flavors of Faygo. Who can't remember hot summer parties and an ice cold tub of Faygos....fishing around blindly for that favorite flavor until your whole arm was numb.

According to the Detroit News article, Faygo was the first to coin the term "pop" which ultimately became the word of choice over soda in these parts. It was also the first beverage company to introduce twist-off caps.

Innovation + Differentiation = a solid, enduring brand. Was it ever as big as Coca Cola or Pepsi? No, but regionally it set itself apart from the big competitors because it was different and unique. You have the feeling that they achieved what they set out to accomplish and being the biggest beverage brand out there wasn't the goal. It was creating great products and memories for a number of generations. It identified its niche and built it over the past 100 years and a half dozen generations.

Can you establish a stronger and more enduring brand than that? Congratulations, Faygo!

Independent Bank's branding independent of Independent Bank's PR

There was an article in this week's Oakland Business Review talking about Independent Bank's new look and identity. I'm excited to read up on company's--especially local companies--rebranding efforts. I was looking forward to commenting on it in this blog. A local case study! Great!

I read Mark Sanchez's article and was surprised to not see a new logo for Independent Bank, but a new logo of 5/3 Bank. Huh?

Curious, I go to Independent's website. Old logo, old site...very old site!

What kind of "carriage before the horse" branding strategy is this? I read the article again. There's no mention that this is what Independent Bank plans to do. It reads like it's already here...but where is it?

We were meeting with a client the other day and talking about the timeline to launch their rebranding strategy and new corporate identity. We talked about how it takes much longer to re-position an existing company than it does to create an identity for a totally new entity. There's old identity that needs to be replaced and taken out of circulation. There's an OLD WEBSITE that needs to at least be updated with the new look. There is so much involved.

So why would Independent's PR people push for ink in the Oakland Business Review before anything is etched in stone--literally? Why jump the gun? It's simple--because people think that branding is a logo or an identity. They also think they can tell you what the brand is and when it's going to be launched. They think that's all it is.

"It's to build awareness of the bank and rise above the clutter," Vice President of Marketing Shelby Reno told OBR. But the sidebar to the left of that quote has Fifth Third Bank's new logo and a mention of Citizens Bank's pending campaign.

That, people, is clutter.

Does your business...

...take shortcuts or do it right the first time?