Sadly, in today's fear based economy, especially the home building industry, many of us hesitate to open the curtains in the morning. Shivering with negative anticipation, we shrink at the thought of hearing about one more failure among our peers, a reduced buyer base, or worse yet, finding our coffers empty and our lenders on their way to Timbuktu. We feel powerless, like we're spinning our wheels trying to grow and survive. At the same time there's an eerie and profound fear that we don't quite know if we're doing the right thing.
For those of you who are reaching out for help, who have heard about the solid principals brand marketing can bring to your company and want to drink the lemonade, a common question is circling. "So how long will it take before I will see results?" Or to translate, "How long before you save me?"
For decades, traditional new-home marketing practices have been about throwing out your nets to a calculated number of prospects, with hooks, speed-bumps and giveaways as your bait, which some call advertisements or mailing campaigns. We hover over our prospects like vultures with name tags, waiting for our prey to stop at a sign, call us or walk-in to our models. And then we pounce, filling in a customer card, and proudly scratch a check-mark onto our list of things to "do" today. People showed up? Didn't the strategy work?
First, let's define what we mean by results. One of the first things I do with my clients is clarify language. I make sure we're all speaking the same one before we start. It's key to positioning our strategy. Then when we know what the real question is, the answers come.
Results can come in many forms. It's a sliding scale of episodic measurements whose elements are more about what direction you're moving than just movement. For instance, efficiency within your organization, increased morale, lower costs, higher conversion rates, employee retention and increased referral rates are all results, per Se. And, so are sales. Solid, wet-ink, check-clearing sales. So, it stands to reason that if sales is your ultimate result then all behaviors, processes, measurements and initiatives should be moving you toward that end with mind-blowing precision.
The truth is by simply aligning the look of all your image materials, mapping and controlling your systems and learning what your customer needs and how he buys can all offer you immediate results. Reigning in and controlling how everyone is talking to one another and your customer can also help you emerge from anonymity. But to see yourself buckled in at the top of the brand race-car requires a two way commitment between you and all your employees. Your brand marketing specialist can be your guide but the vehicle of your success is you.
The reason brand marketing is so compelling and so elusive at the same time is it only begins to breath and move when a symphony of events, which have been carefully choreographed, are set in motion through total goal clarity.
It starts with understanding exactly who you are and what you do, and forming a plan of action based on your resources, business plan, and the talent you have. From there you put a marketing message strategy in place that gives you a voice that's real. The impact of a simple and real message (advertising) is more evident when it's backed by the entire organization's karma because then it draws customers to you. Yes, to you. No more throwing out impersonal and desperate nets. Now you can predict your success because you're actually presenting solutions that work, reaching out with messages that follow the way people are really looking for products, and following through with the customer experience you promised in the first place. It is the only way to be heard above the roar of messages that are already out there. It's the only way to true results.
To find our how you can experience predictable and fast results, contact us today. Let us help you grow.
Monday, July 21, 2008
How do I get people to join my brand?
If we could do anything to help you, we’d wail on you until you understand that you don’t sell a commodity, you sell an experience. That’s the only way to be remembered and it’s the essence of brand marketing. Few are better at executing that idea than Starbucks which is why the news of Howard Schultz, CEO of this coffee empire, adding movies and more to his menu of mild, medium and bold is simply the next letter in the alphabet of the language of brand success.
In case you hadn’t noticed, Mr. Schultz doesn’t really market coffee. He peddles a cup of warmth that displays a logo announcing to others you have taste and sensibility. He gives you a little plastic card that says, “You’re one of us”. He invites you to soothe yourself by a roaring fire in torn Levis and a skull cap, or sip tea, wearing an Armani suit reading classic literature. And everyone can become a philanthropist by taking home a fragrant heap of beans to help third world countries teach kids to read. So, attaching comparable music, DVD’s and other items to this genre fits in the brand of ‘belonging’ so neatly you hardly recognize it was a stroke of genius and not just an accidental cross commerce add-on.
We talk about Starbucks because they’ve asked the questions you need to ask yourself. Stop thinking about selling houses and start thinking about gathering places and connections and symbols. What can you do to create the unique feel of home so thoroughly that people want to pick their own spot in your community? How does your model home feel, smell, sound? What subliminal messages are on your walls? What do you stand for? What do you solve? What do you recommend? What kind of iconic takeaway can you begin to provide that screams to others that you have taste and sensibility? Ask yourself if you’re trying to author bland cross marketing add-ons or if you’re bundling intelligent solutions and creating a club everyone wants to join.
If you feel yourself warming up to this idea, contact C and Company to help you with the process of turning the daily grind into grounds for success. If Howard can do it with coffee just think what you can do with a whole neighborhood!!
(c) 2008 Advice for Builders: Brand
Camine Pappas
C and Company
In case you hadn’t noticed, Mr. Schultz doesn’t really market coffee. He peddles a cup of warmth that displays a logo announcing to others you have taste and sensibility. He gives you a little plastic card that says, “You’re one of us”. He invites you to soothe yourself by a roaring fire in torn Levis and a skull cap, or sip tea, wearing an Armani suit reading classic literature. And everyone can become a philanthropist by taking home a fragrant heap of beans to help third world countries teach kids to read. So, attaching comparable music, DVD’s and other items to this genre fits in the brand of ‘belonging’ so neatly you hardly recognize it was a stroke of genius and not just an accidental cross commerce add-on.
We talk about Starbucks because they’ve asked the questions you need to ask yourself. Stop thinking about selling houses and start thinking about gathering places and connections and symbols. What can you do to create the unique feel of home so thoroughly that people want to pick their own spot in your community? How does your model home feel, smell, sound? What subliminal messages are on your walls? What do you stand for? What do you solve? What do you recommend? What kind of iconic takeaway can you begin to provide that screams to others that you have taste and sensibility? Ask yourself if you’re trying to author bland cross marketing add-ons or if you’re bundling intelligent solutions and creating a club everyone wants to join.
If you feel yourself warming up to this idea, contact C and Company to help you with the process of turning the daily grind into grounds for success. If Howard can do it with coffee just think what you can do with a whole neighborhood!!
(c) 2008 Advice for Builders: Brand
Camine Pappas
C and Company
How Do I Get My Signs Seen?
When I drive down the country lane near my home, I can’t help but notice that more and more bootleg directional signs are beginning to take the place of the usual expanses of green pastures, cedar fences and newly mowed fields. Perhaps, like most people in growing suburban areas, I am struck by the sense that the authors of these sign campaigns are desperate to capture, lure and shout their way into my subconscious. I’m not listening but they’re sure telling. I am, after this short drive, overwhelmed by their monologue of desperation that screams, “look at us!” I’m always hoping to see if any of the messages offer something that’s about me. I think I’m going to be driving for a long time.
Remember the line in the Pixar Movie, The Incredibles “When everyone is super then no one is.” It kinda of makes you stop and realize that one good idea, copied a million times is suddenly a bad idea. If you can’t be different you can’t be noticed. Saying it by adding more and more signs each week is not a solution, it’s just more signs.
Here’s a new idea. Think about the whole process of finding a community, then find the solution to the problem that everyone ignores. Let’s say you couldn't use a sign at all. All you could use is your website. The thought process you might employ would certainly include a plan for success, based on the “brand” you wanted to be known for. Say, “The builder who doesn’t clutter the landscape but still gets everyone to their sites with efficiency”.
At C and Company we have helped countless companies use their websites, and their inventiveness to this advantage, helping establish systems and processes that give them a heightened awareness in the marketplace. In this scenario, helping a customer locate and easily drive to a new community without signs, as well offering a more friendly experience from happy, motivated staff implementing a unique initiative is news that travels fast. We can help you discover new solutions to replace what used be a “super” idea and just isn't working any more.
Bold, yes. Get rid of signs? Innovative thought. More than 90% of prospective home buyers visit a website before venturing out in their cars. We challenge you to look for innovative, brand based answers and start creating a new kind of brand buzz!
(c) 2008 Signs, Buzz and Building your Brand
Camine Pappas
C and Company
Remember the line in the Pixar Movie, The Incredibles “When everyone is super then no one is.” It kinda of makes you stop and realize that one good idea, copied a million times is suddenly a bad idea. If you can’t be different you can’t be noticed. Saying it by adding more and more signs each week is not a solution, it’s just more signs.
Here’s a new idea. Think about the whole process of finding a community, then find the solution to the problem that everyone ignores. Let’s say you couldn't use a sign at all. All you could use is your website. The thought process you might employ would certainly include a plan for success, based on the “brand” you wanted to be known for. Say, “The builder who doesn’t clutter the landscape but still gets everyone to their sites with efficiency”.
At C and Company we have helped countless companies use their websites, and their inventiveness to this advantage, helping establish systems and processes that give them a heightened awareness in the marketplace. In this scenario, helping a customer locate and easily drive to a new community without signs, as well offering a more friendly experience from happy, motivated staff implementing a unique initiative is news that travels fast. We can help you discover new solutions to replace what used be a “super” idea and just isn't working any more.
Bold, yes. Get rid of signs? Innovative thought. More than 90% of prospective home buyers visit a website before venturing out in their cars. We challenge you to look for innovative, brand based answers and start creating a new kind of brand buzz!
(c) 2008 Signs, Buzz and Building your Brand
Camine Pappas
C and Company
Why is Emotional Selling Pivotal to Brand Success?
Whenever I sit down with a new customer and prepare them for their ‘brand creation’ journey, the first thing I assess is whether or not they have ever considered how pivotal creative processes are to their organizational success and not just their marketing success.
I find that even the mention of “right-brained thinking” conjures up visions of couches and graying men with beards who ask about your childhood. While I have them with their jaws gaping I also ask them if they realize that every member of their team will need to embrace a collective, emotional idea in order to deliver on the brand promise.
Most often I meet with resistance. “Just design a great logo and collateral. Sales can handle the rest. We don’t need to worry about that side of our business.” Here’s why that answer spells disaster.
Our phobias toward intuitive strategies in a world where an emotional, impulsive and informed consumer rules, need to be dealt with. Understanding why people buy requires an aptitude geared toward the emotions that link marketing to the actual act of buying. It requires that company owners agree on and create a consistent language. Owners must instill a common vision so that each person feels personally connected to the emotional value the buying experience gives to the consumer. And to really succeed with brand marketing, you need to have the courage to be innovative and not follow the pack.
Don’t panic yet. Even if your company is more ‘engineer’ and than 'imagineer’, you can still create solid branding solutions. First, think simple. We tend to over complicate what should be a very natural relationship between buyer and seller by either using or creating strategies that separate us emotionally from our buyer. Strategies that cut off the very blood supply that will make sales happen.
What are those bad habits? Things like making our customers stand behind the counter, take a number, or telling them, “We can’t open up that section because our waitress is overloaded”, “Returns not allowed after 7 days without a receipt”, “Park only in designated spaces”, and my personal favorite, “That’s just our policy”. Real grease for the wheel, eh? Oh, and by the way, will you please fill out this little card and tell us all about yourself? You know the answer to that one.
Are you beginning to see why learning how to sell with emotion can offer hope instead of hype? In short, people have to believe that you will meet their expectations. If you’re doing it right you’ll be more aware of your customer’s needs and remove barriers to your success. In fact, when these things begin to happen in sync you’ll begin to save money on advertising, become more efficient when developing new product lines, and you may even discover you’re creating a trend instead of following one. Approaching marketing with this angle will also make it easier to attract and retain talent because everyone has an emotional stake in your success.
Now, don’t stop reading early, here’s when the real fun starts. When your customer becomes the vehicle in which the message you tell is carried to other potential customers, you have the ultimate brand success. She tells others about you, and she says it with a believability that you could never achieve even if you had Proctor and Gamble’s marketing budget. Right brains are on the right track after all.
(c) 2008 Brand Creation by Camine Pappas
Camine Pappas
C and Company, Marketing Strategy and Branding Experts
Charlotte, NC
I find that even the mention of “right-brained thinking” conjures up visions of couches and graying men with beards who ask about your childhood. While I have them with their jaws gaping I also ask them if they realize that every member of their team will need to embrace a collective, emotional idea in order to deliver on the brand promise.
Most often I meet with resistance. “Just design a great logo and collateral. Sales can handle the rest. We don’t need to worry about that side of our business.” Here’s why that answer spells disaster.
Our phobias toward intuitive strategies in a world where an emotional, impulsive and informed consumer rules, need to be dealt with. Understanding why people buy requires an aptitude geared toward the emotions that link marketing to the actual act of buying. It requires that company owners agree on and create a consistent language. Owners must instill a common vision so that each person feels personally connected to the emotional value the buying experience gives to the consumer. And to really succeed with brand marketing, you need to have the courage to be innovative and not follow the pack.
Don’t panic yet. Even if your company is more ‘engineer’ and than 'imagineer’, you can still create solid branding solutions. First, think simple. We tend to over complicate what should be a very natural relationship between buyer and seller by either using or creating strategies that separate us emotionally from our buyer. Strategies that cut off the very blood supply that will make sales happen.
What are those bad habits? Things like making our customers stand behind the counter, take a number, or telling them, “We can’t open up that section because our waitress is overloaded”, “Returns not allowed after 7 days without a receipt”, “Park only in designated spaces”, and my personal favorite, “That’s just our policy”. Real grease for the wheel, eh? Oh, and by the way, will you please fill out this little card and tell us all about yourself? You know the answer to that one.
Are you beginning to see why learning how to sell with emotion can offer hope instead of hype? In short, people have to believe that you will meet their expectations. If you’re doing it right you’ll be more aware of your customer’s needs and remove barriers to your success. In fact, when these things begin to happen in sync you’ll begin to save money on advertising, become more efficient when developing new product lines, and you may even discover you’re creating a trend instead of following one. Approaching marketing with this angle will also make it easier to attract and retain talent because everyone has an emotional stake in your success.
Now, don’t stop reading early, here’s when the real fun starts. When your customer becomes the vehicle in which the message you tell is carried to other potential customers, you have the ultimate brand success. She tells others about you, and she says it with a believability that you could never achieve even if you had Proctor and Gamble’s marketing budget. Right brains are on the right track after all.
(c) 2008 Brand Creation by Camine Pappas
Camine Pappas
C and Company, Marketing Strategy and Branding Experts
Charlotte, NC
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Change Is The Fire That Helps Ideas Emerge
When fires ravaged Yellowstone National Park in 1988, great minds from all over the science and environmental communities were ignited with concern. We had, according to them witness one of the greatest natural disasters in history. An event that had blotted out thousands of years of nature’s most perfect trophies and laid them waste with only an eerie billow of smoke to mark their black graves.
Not long after they dried their tears, these experts began to take notice of the smaller events emerging. Suddenly the real truth began to manifest itself in the ashes. There, beneath the warm, soft layer of charred monoliths they discovered tiny plants pushing eagerly through to the light. What was so amazing about these sprouts is that they came from seeds dormant for eons. In fact, the heat of the fire as well as the opportunity to reach the sun was the reason for their emergence. Finally, these small voices found their solo opportunity in a symphony that had never experienced a pause, until now.
During many of my training seminars and subsequent round table discussion I talk a lot about perceived limitations and old ideas we can’t let go of. We agreed that our belief window limits our sights, no matter how sophisticated our processes. I also find, when confronted with change that FEAR seems to permeate our common sense. We use it as a reason to feel disconnected from the very people we are there to advise. But if we take a lesson from nature we see that when we eliminate the clutter of our old beliefs, (our old trees if you will) that there are new, fresh, strong ideas and events that can bring new life to our business.
An even higher concept is the idea that a brand strategy can be the fire to clear away the clutter. With a clear message to guide you the sun can reach those customers who are looking for the light and a clear path to your door. This is another reason the concepts of connecting, solving, learning, advising and fulfilling are more congruent with the human element you’re hoping to nurture.
So when you feel you don’t want to let go of the old ways, just remember that soon you’ll see your seedlings, that have been dormant, come to life and you will have your moment in the sun.
Camine Pappas on Brand Strategy
C & Company
Not long after they dried their tears, these experts began to take notice of the smaller events emerging. Suddenly the real truth began to manifest itself in the ashes. There, beneath the warm, soft layer of charred monoliths they discovered tiny plants pushing eagerly through to the light. What was so amazing about these sprouts is that they came from seeds dormant for eons. In fact, the heat of the fire as well as the opportunity to reach the sun was the reason for their emergence. Finally, these small voices found their solo opportunity in a symphony that had never experienced a pause, until now.
During many of my training seminars and subsequent round table discussion I talk a lot about perceived limitations and old ideas we can’t let go of. We agreed that our belief window limits our sights, no matter how sophisticated our processes. I also find, when confronted with change that FEAR seems to permeate our common sense. We use it as a reason to feel disconnected from the very people we are there to advise. But if we take a lesson from nature we see that when we eliminate the clutter of our old beliefs, (our old trees if you will) that there are new, fresh, strong ideas and events that can bring new life to our business.
An even higher concept is the idea that a brand strategy can be the fire to clear away the clutter. With a clear message to guide you the sun can reach those customers who are looking for the light and a clear path to your door. This is another reason the concepts of connecting, solving, learning, advising and fulfilling are more congruent with the human element you’re hoping to nurture.
So when you feel you don’t want to let go of the old ways, just remember that soon you’ll see your seedlings, that have been dormant, come to life and you will have your moment in the sun.
Camine Pappas on Brand Strategy
C & Company
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