How to Get your Brand Noticed

In order to differentiate your brand you must create an experience for the customer. Customer experience is about creating memorable experiences a unique experience that becomes the product or service you are selling. Once you get in the mind of your customer their loyalty to your company increases. Your branding campaign should include the following triggers: · Emotional Signature- Beauty, ugliness, frustration, love, arrogance, etc. are emotions the customer can identify with. Intel used a successful unpleasant campaign: it built brand recognition with an unpleasant and piercing jingle. · Stand for a Cause or Point of View- When you stand for a cause you are fighting an enemy. In business, selecting a good enemy is more powerful than any other business strategy or innovation. Apple stands for “Computer as an Experience” opposed to “Computer as a Tool”. Google stands for “Simplicity” opposed to “Portal.” When you have a good, juicy, big enemy it’s easier to build a community of followers and brand evangelicals to take down the Goliath. But don’t kill the enemy! You need him more than he needs you. · Gratitude- Gratitude is based on the Law of Reciprocity: we repay in kind what another person has provided us. For companies the question is what to give to customers to trigger gratitude? Free and extra services, loyalty programs, gifts, and discounts are the most common. However, giving relevant and trustful information is the most powerful gift. · Education- Giving information as an education is the most powerful relationship builder. Send newsletters and Ezines offering relevant information. Perhaps you are an insurance agent, you could write about safe driving tips or how to choose a security system for your reader’s homes. Be sure not to bore your readers with constant sales pitches or with boring information about how great you are.  Write as if you are having a conversation with your reader.  Keep it informal and conversational.  It is also a lot easier to write content if you do so with the thought you are talking to someone.  · Vulnerability- Showing your vulnerability makes you more human, likable and more like the rest of us and your customers. Show your vulnerability, be transparent and address your mistakes to build a trustful relationship. Inform your customers that you are behind schedule and you are sorry because things went in a direction you didn’t foresee. · Privilege- The feeling of being privileged by nature or by circumstance is a big positive memory trigger because everyone wants to feel special. Always remember your customer’s name (know how to spell it) and face; listen to your customers and show that you understand what they are saying; remember what they said to you in the past, and read their unstated or incorrectly stated need to address it in a unique way. By following these steps you will increase your social capital. · Invite Customers Behind the Scene- Show them how you work, tell them what’s going on, showcase your employees. It’s like inviting someone to your home for dinner, it creates intimacy.

Direct Mail Advertising Goes in the Trash

As more people think green and are ecology-minded, the average household receives about 200 pounds of junk mail per year. Meanwhile, the average phonebook weighs about 4 pounds and kills millions of trees. Because half of all adults neither use their junk mail nor open their phone books, that means 100 pounds per household of wasted paper and 2 pounds of wasted phone books. A lobbying group has formed claiming that junk mail is actually good for the environment. They call it “advertising mail.” It saves gas and reduces traffic jams. No lie! Check out www.mailmovesamerica.org. It’s time we started putting things into perspective. The direct mail industry doesn’t have much of a face; there’s no big brand name or no TV, radio or newspaper promotion behind it. It just slips into the mailbox every day. And most people’s first stop between the mailbox and the door is the trash can, where most of it winds up. There’s too much waste in advertising. It’s giving the industry a bad name. Every advertiser feels like John Wanamaker, the magnate who pioneered the concept of department store and in 1874 printed the first-ever store advertisement, who believed that half of his advertising worked and half of it didn’t – and he didn’t know which half was which. If the Internet fulfills its promise of delivering greater advertising efficiency, let’s hope it wraps its digital tentacles around direct mail and squeezes hard.

I Want My TV

New studies by the University at Buffalo and Miami University of Ohio found that watching TV can drive away feelings of loneliness and rejection. The studies are reported in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology and suggest that watching TV provides viewers with the illusion that their social needs are being met. The 'social surrogacy hypothesis’ tested in these studies posits that people can use the media to provide the experience of belonging when no real belongingness has been experienced. The studies found that subjects felt less lonely when viewing their favorite TV shows; subjects’ belongingness needs were aroused when viewing their favorite shows; thinking about favorite TV shows buffered subjects against drops in self-esteem, increases in negative mood and feelings of rejection, and subjects verbally expressed fewer feelings of loneliness after viewing their preferred TV shows. Researchers concluded that a viewer's fictional bond with TV characters can help ease their need to connect with others. The study authors noted, however, that it remains an open question whether social surrogacy suppresses belongingness needs or actually fulfills them. They acknowledge that the kind of social surrogacy provoked by these programs can be a poor substitution for 'real' human-to-human experience. Television viewership is up in this down economy, which isn't all that surprising. TV is, after all, a cheap form of escapism. But before you tune in to tune out the realities of recession, remember that prime-time TV is full of pretty people and even prettier things. All this glamour affects how you think about your position in the world. According to Boston College sociologist Juliet Schor, "Television viewing results in an up-scaling of desire, and that in turn leads people to buy." Her study found that every additional hour of TV viewing per week boosts spending by roughly $200 a year. So a handful of sitcoms and a reality series or two can cost you more than a grand a year. Forget keeping up with the Joneses; now people are struggling to keep up with the Kardashians. If you can't bring yourself to give up TV entirely, then at least stop watching shows centered on the lifestyles of the fictionally rich. Try COPS or The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer. No one ever looked at the PBS anchor and said, "I've got to get a blazer like that!"