Whether or not this anecdote is true, Hemingway’s ability to write in short, compelling and powerful sentences is one of the reasons his stories are still so widely read and enjoyed today. This lesson on the importance of brevity is one any organization can – and should – apply when crafting a brand identity

Boiling Down Your Brand

Every entity that offers its services, promotes its wares or strives to get your attention in the marketplace is a brand. Your organization’s brand has to convey the key values of your organization — values rooted in its core activities — in order to develop a loyal following. The most successful and powerful brands boil down their essence or identity to one simple and succinct phrase.

This is not as easy as it looks. We have all been guilty of getting too wordy when writing. As the core of your organization’s mission, values, and personality, it is tempting to include the million wonderful aspects and amenities about your particular product or service in your brand statement. Wanting to be everything to everyone will only weaken your brand identity. Learning to say “no” to things that don’t contribute to the brand you are trying to build is fundamental.

Make Every Word Count

The tighter the message, the easier it is for customers to become emotionally engaged. It is crucial to make every word work in telling part of your story. The point of brevity is not to say less, but to communicate your message more concisely.

Time and time again we have seen the results of loose, lengthy and unfocused brand identities: off-message advertising, spinning wheels, missed opportunities. Once you do have your brand essence down pat, it serves as a beacon that defines, motivates and inspires all other marketing efforts.

Sources of Inspiration

Need a burst of inspiration to get your group’s six-word brand identity on track? In 2006, following Hemingway’s example, the editors of storytelling magazine SMITH asked readers to contribute their own life stories using just six words and published the results in the book “Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure.” In 2010, SMITH followed up with a second collection entitled “It All Changed in an Instant: More Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure.” Both publications make for compelling reading and are sure to get your creative juices flowing.

So why not give Hemingway’s six-word challenge a try for your brand essence? With some hard work, the result may very well be a positive, powerful brand that effectively conveys the heart and soul of your organization.

But let’s not forget about tangible Direct Mail pieces! Be it a postcard, bi-fold or multiple page brochure, Direct Mail pieces have the power to capture a target’s attention and elicit a powerful response through color, weight, design and feel.

Direct Mail allows you to literally put your message in your customers’ hands, encouraging interaction. The inclusion of coupons, response cards, order codes or URLs not only makes responding easy for your customers, it makes tracking the success of your direct mail campaign a cinch for you. And direct mail is every bit as accurate in targeting an audience as an eBlast.

It really comes down to the difference between holding a handwritten letter on fine stationary versus hearing the “ding” of an incoming eMail…or leisurely leafing through a book of vibrant color photography printed on heavy, glossy stock versus flicking from one monochromatic screen to another on an eReader.

The most effective direct marketing campaign uses the cyber power of email and the emotional pull of a tangible mailer. So…do you think you have the right mix?

By now we all know that building and maintaining a consistent brand is crucial to any business. Equally important, however, is the ability to recognize when you need a fresh, new direction. Your brand is the driving force of your company’s marketing strategy. If it is failing in its objective, it’s time for a makeover.

Clearly, if your brand has been linked to negative perceptions or involved with any sort of controversy, a repositioning strategy is needed to improve a tarnished reputation. If your current brand positioning is no longer valid for your target market, or your target market has changed, you will need to reassess your brand.

Are you taking your company in a new direction, or updating or expanding the products or services you offer? The time could be right to rebrand your business. Have your customers stopped favoring your brand identity? Have your material, collateral and signage designs become dated and tired? It’s time to reposition your company’s identity in the minds of your consumers.

Change is inevitable. Your business must continue to evolve, or be left behind. Ironically, those who live with a brand day in and day out are often the last to see when it is deteriorating or growing stagnant. It’s crucial to work with proven brand design specialists who can help you take a step back and get the big picture by conducting a thorough brand analysis.

Your brand is your company’s face to the world. Are you putting your best face forward?

At Parker & Partners, we like to use the “small fish in a big pond” analogy. If you’re currently with a big city agency, you’re paying—A LOT—to swim in their oversized pond. Worse yet, you’re probably not experiencing the personal service, attention to detail or financial return you rightly deserve on your significant marketing investment.

There is life beyond the big city agencies. When you take the plunge into a smaller pond, you’re instantly transformed into a big fish with some significant top-of-the-food-chain benefits:

• Tremendous Cost Savings: With far more streamlined operations, smaller agencies can deliver results at a fraction of the cost. The money you save on outrageous big agency fees can be put to far better use in the actual marketing of your brand.
• More Hustle Per Dollar: A smaller agency is truly dedicated to your success. Your marketing needs are not an afterthought or last minute rush—they’re a primary focus. Your product or service will benefit from the hands-on attention of experienced agency principals, and not be passed off to an unproven underling.
• Enhanced Agility: Smaller agencies are more nimble, able to turn around a highly-effective campaign or project in a hurry when needed, rather than putting it into a hulking production schedule.
• A Fresh Take: Maybe your longtime agency has become complacent with the same old messaging when change could be the shake-up your brand really requires.

So take a good, hard look at what your agency has done for you lately. Then give us a call to take a dip in the Parker & Partners pond. It’s good to be a big fish!

Digital technologies have brought a new way to advertise, not the only way to advertise. Direct mail techniques coupled with digital technologies can offer any company a personalized and effective way to communicate with their audience. A good web presence can vastly improve your company’s profile, but if you are lacking the visits then your site isn’t being listed high in search engines. If you’re not being listed high in search engines then you’re not being noticed.

Being online isn’t enough by itself. An effective direct mail campaign will drive people to your website which can lead to a jump in online visits and sales. A successful marketing strategy will use direct mail, social media, digital forms of advertising and public relations as complementary vehicles to drive their company’s presence in the public eye.

A very attractive aspect of digital advertising technologies is the ability to track who has clicked on an ad or how many people have visited a site. The same can be true for direct mail. For too long, marketers had trouble measuring the success of direct mail. For instance, if you mailed out 10,000 postcards, how could you know who read them? If you had 300 people visit your site on Monday, 500 visits on Wednesday, and the mailer dropped on Tuesday, how many of those 200 new hits can you attribute to the mailer? Retailers can count on promotional codes to measure actual buys but this still doesn’t give you an accurate measure. What about non-retailers? Personalized URLs are the direct mailers measure factor.

Personalized URLs are name specific URL addresses intended for a certain person or company. For example XYZ Bank would get a direct mail piece from Parker & Partners Marketing Resources, explaining a new program. A personalized URL would have them go to a web address like this… www.XYZBank.parkerandpartners.com/blog.

This web page could be personalized for each recipient and more importantly be tracked with analytics.

It’s about leveraging different forms of technologies into one smart marketing tool. This is just the start to a direct mail and digital technology partnership. Marketers would be wise to get a seat on each one of these ships, instead of sitting solely on one. Success works hand in hand with strategy.

Of the social marketing options available today, the most visible right now is Facebook. While it took radio 38 years, television 13 years and the Internet as a whole four years to reach 50 million users, Facebook added more than 200 million uses in less than one year. In the United States, Facebook tops Google for weekly traffic.

And for those who would dismiss the social media boom as a youth-oriented fad, it’s important to note that women ages 55 to 65 are the fastest growing segment of Facebook users. If the Facebook population was its own country, it would be the third largest in the world, behind China and India and ahead of the United States.

Traditional marketing channels are being challenged as they have never been before. In a world where newspapers are in decline and television viewers can whiz through commercial breaks on their DVRs or TiVos, it is imperative to make social media a part of your marketing mix. New technologies, new practices, and new ideas continue to evolve on a daily basis. To remain successful, your business needs to evolve right along with it.

Social media is where a sizeable percentage of people find everything from employment to romantic partners. It is also where consumers seek information on products and services. When polled, more social media users said they would trust peer recommendations over advertising.

Facebook now has more than 400 million active users. Half of those active users log on to Facebook in any given day. Each month, they spend 500 billion minutes on Facebook, sharing  25 billion pieces of content including weblinks, news stories, blog posts and photo albums.  Your brands, products and services are being talked about in real time. What are they saying about you?

Have you Tweeted lately? In 2009 there were 18 million Twitter users; that’s 3.8 % of all adult Internet users. In 2010, projected Twitter member numbers are 26 million or 15.5% of adult Internet users. Blogs. YouTube. Wiki. Podcasts. LinkedIn. Four Square. New avenues of social media are emerging every day.

In today’s marketing reality, immediacy, accessibility, community and interaction are key. Ignoring social media in your marketing strategy could be a very costly decision. Embrace the limitless opportunities of social media as a mainstream marketing tool. Keep it real, keep it relevant and make your voice heard.

The results are right in front of us. Lebron turned a terrible, small market basketball team into a power house in the Eastern Conference with loads of international and national fans. Ticket sales, jersey sales, endorsements have all risen to all time highs. Cleveland’s average attendance per game has risen 43% in the six years Lebron has played there, which is a total of 349,065 people for the year. If you finish the equation with ticket and food sales that’s a lot of money for a small market team. Now put Lebron with a team like the NY Knicks, remember I’m just speculating so relax Cav fans, where they aren’t that great of a team right now but are still selling tickets because well it’s New York…it’s the perfect storm.

Imagine the people and celebrities a player like Lebron would bring in if he played for the Knicks. Surrounded by a mecca of powerful people who would gladly pay anything to see Lebron play while Spike Lee cheers him on from the front row. Think of the advertising and marketing opportunities for the Knicks, Lebron, Nike, and NY companies in general. A big time player in an even bigger market. A 20-story Nike ad of Lebron in a Knick’s jersey on the side of a building in Times Square. Advertising and marketing in New York City will be at it’s best and most entertaining.

Marketing the Knicks will never be easier. What if the Knicks let Lebron slide by? How will the city react after all the hype and hoping of rebuilding the Knicks back to a good team? As a Philly fan I’m rooting for the Clippers! Either way we’re in for an entertaining summer.

Blogs, fan sites, micro sites and spoiler rumors sprung up faster than the smoke monster and I’ve never experienced a TV show that created such a buzz in every media outlet. LOST created a sub-culture that logged on every day to chat about that nights episode. They created micro sites that told a little more of the story or webisodes to give clues to what was really happening. I remember going to a website that was featured in a Dharma commercial and playing the game for hours until I found every clue. Dharma commercials strategically placed in real-time commercials like they were a real group. The numbers, the voices, the smoke monster, the island, the hatch, real-life culture references all things we came back episode after episode to figure out what they actually were. We Google’d the song playing on Desmond’s record player until our fingers bled. Everything in the show was a possible clue.

LOST was the definition of a “water cooler” show and even a “lunch through dinner” show. More people watched the show because they didn’t want to be the person not watching LOST. A great show with a great marketing and advertising strategy to keep the fans just happy and curious enough to keep coming back for 6 seasons. The best and worst part of LOST was wanting more but loving the mystery behind what we didn’t know yet. With more and more island mysteries being solved and beloved characters dying off, I am realizing how much I will miss LOST’s cliff hangers and baffling puzzles.

Congrats out to LOST and the complete crew on a great run! Shows like this don’t come around that often any more. If anyone reads this from the show, how about a little spoiler info one last time?

Always worth a try…

We’re proud to have been given recognition for our work at the recent NJ Art Directors Club Awards. We took home a bronze for our Heart Walk t-shirt design and silver for our NJ Smart Start Buildings Commercial design, in both cases the work was worthy of creative recognition.

The Art Directors Club did a great job switching up the venue and presentation of this years show. Why is it we work hard all year round, send in our best work, get selected as a finalist and then some groan when they have to attend a show where their work is being praised? These shows are meant for us to show our skills and reward us for the hours and days we put into the work. This is a way for other people who understand the time and thought it takes to pull an award winning design off to walk around and appreciate each other as designers and visionaries. Since we are based in Atlantic County, every year we take the two hour ride to North Jersey for the ADCNJ’s, and every year we contemplate not going (not out of lack of interest but rather time commitment). However, as soon as we enter the room you can feel the creative energy and it makes it worth the ride, time, and effort.

There were however, noticeably, a few companies not in attendance that won awards and I would like to offer them a few words of advice, “Take the time to appreciate what you have done.” Attend the awards shows and be grateful you were recognized by your creative peers. A woman that sat at our table said her company was not up for an award but she thought it would be a good idea to come and see what other companies were doing for their clients and get a feel for what these shows were all about. I first I didn’t understand why, but she’s right; first place, second place, or fourth place shouldn’t matter, it’s getting together with our creative peers to commend and recognize each other for a job well done. We only get one night to celebrate a year of hard work.

The food, company, comedian and drinks, and most importantly the work were great this year; hopefully we’ll run into a few more of our creative comrades next year.

What Wawa has done in its free-transaction ATM program which it began in 1996 is to give its customers yet another reason to come into their stores. Wawa, being no dummies, fully understands that once someone walks in a store, they inevitably walk out having made some purchases as well. Wawa also recently eliminated the up-charge for credit card gas transactions, though it was surprising that this wasn’t already part of their strategy.

Wawa deserves to make its profit margin and they are wise to understand that by being “magnanimous” in free ATM transactions and no credit card up-charges for gas, they in fact solidify their customer base, create more traffic and, as a result, are even more successful.

Part of Wawa’s stated mission is to Do Things Right. Once again “two hooks up” for Wawa in the doing things right department.