Tag: Branding

How a strong brand voice helps you stand out from the crowd.

I love the song We Are The World. It was one of the biggest hits of my early childhood. It is up there with other timeless classics like Karma Chameleon, Rhinestone Cowboy, and Pac-Man Fever.

We Are The World, was written by Lionel Richie and Michael Jackson, and produced by Quincy (Don’t-Call-Me-Adams) Jones. The song features 50 of the biggest musical acts of the 1980s, plus Dan Akroyd.

The iconic song was recorded after the 1985 American Music Awards show and was released by the supergroup USA for Africa. It is catchy, beautiful and poignant. It tells listeners that it’s time to help aid the people of Africa who were suffering from devastating food shortages because of famine. I’m guessing it’s one of the most uplifting songs about starving ever recorded.

Listening Now

When I hear the song today, the thing that stands out is that I can instantly recognize each of the singers’ voices. Despite the fact that there are 21 soloists in the song. And each of them only sings a line or two. So why is it that nearly 40 years after the song was released I can still identify each voice?

Different is Better Than Better

Because each singer’s voice is unique. They all sound distinctly different. When you listen to the song you realize that one reason these singers became popular is that they have their own unique sound. Which makes them special and easily identifiable, even when they aren’t wearing their signature glove.

Developing Your Voice

If you have a business or work in marketing or advertising, you have to think about developing your unique brand voice. It is how you get recognized and remembered. It is how the Search & Rescue team spots you in the Sea of Sameness. You need to position your brand as different from everyone else. Unless you are a counterfeit brand. If that’s the case you should study every move your model brand makes. And every breath that your model brand takes. I’ll be watching you.

Study To Stand Out

Know what others in your category do and say. But then either do or say different things, or do and say the same things differently. And say, say, say what you want. That’s how you stand out. Like Paul McCartney and MJ.

Your Personal Brand

If you have a personal brand, and we all do, think about developing and nurturing your own unique style. This could be your own unique way of talking, walking, acting, or dressing. You can distinguish yourself with all of those things or anything else that feels unique and interesting to you.

Through my blog posts and books, I have developed my own writing style. Which is typically laced with pop culture references and random things I think are funny. Like the bones in my elbows.

My personal goal is to help everyone who reads my writings learn a little, laugh a little and lift a little. (Lift as in spirits, not dumbells.) I believe this is why I receive so many requests for speaking engagements. (But it could just be that other speakers are unavailable.)

Through the advertising and ideas agency, The Weaponry, I help brands create their own unique voice every day. I highly encourage you to find your way of standing apart from the crowd. Positive differentiation will ensure that more great opportunities find you simply because you own a distinct space in the minds of the opportunity holders. And that is a valuable place to be.

Key Takeaway

Discover and develop your unique brand voice. This is true whether you have a business brand to nurture or a personal brand to perfect. Stand apart from the crowd to get noticed. And people will be much more likely to recruit you to be part of their supergroup.

*If you know someone who could benefit from this message, please share it with them.

+For more of the best life lessons I have learned check out my book, What Does Your Fortune Cookie Say? from Ripples Media.

The best thing about our new stickers is hidden on the back.

There are some business secrets they don’t teach you at Harvard Business School. Like the fact that every great business needs a great sticker. The Weaponry, my advertising and idea agency, now has a great sticker. It comes from Sticker Robot.  Which I think is where The Jetsons and R2-D2 get their sticker supplies.

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Sticker Robot makes the best silkscreened stickers in the business. But if you want some for your business you should order them the same day you establish your legal business entity. Because they take a loooong time to produce. We ordered ours back in November.  They finally arrived on January 16th.

A video on how Sticker Robot make their world-famous stickers.

The Modern Branding Iron.

The whole concept of branding originated from ranchers who branded their livestock with a hot iron to identify their little dogies. Today I find very few people who will let me sear them with a red-hot iron. So we use these 2.5 inch X 2.5 inch vinyl stickers instead. I have already placed one on my computer, my Yeti tumbler, my car and all three of my children.

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We ordered 1000 stickers and got 500 free.

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I’ll tumbler for you.

Check out that backside… (It’s stickerlicious!)

But what I really love about them is their backside. Sticker Robot allows you to print a message or design on the back of the sticker. So we added some of our philosophy. And some of our philosophy about our philosophy. And we added a call to confusion. Which is like a call to action, if the action actually leads to more confusion, like our website does. Visit theweaponry.com to see what I mean.

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I love sharing our philosophy on the back of our sticker. Don’t overlook the little opportunities to share your brand message in unexpected places.

Then we also added a note about the importance of proofreading.  See the *note below? I’ll wait while you review.

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Did you find the typo? Did you look carefully?

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The Typo

If you didn’t find the typo it is probably because there is no typo. We just thought it was a funny addition. And perhaps it would increase engagement. Who reads the back of a sticker two or three times?  Well, if it’s a sticker from The Weaponry, and you feel challenged, maybe you will. Then, maybe you walk away with a story about how you spent 60 seconds looking for a typo that wasn’t really there.

This sticker sums up The Weaponry pretty well.

  1. We believe in the power of a consistent brand look.
  2. Red reflects our enthusiasm.
  3. We believe the most powerful weapon on Earth is the human mind.
  4. We believe that business is war.
  5. We believe we shouldn’t take ourselves too seriously.
  6. And we believe in finding fun ways to increase engagement.

Your takeaway.

If you would like a sticker just ask (I now carry them with me everywhere). Or leave a request in the comment section below. You can also stop by The Weaponry to pick one up (1661 N. Water Street In Milwaukee). If you are looking for a job, an internship, a chance to network or just a good excuse to come for a grand tour of The Weaponry’s World Headquarters, a sticker request is a good in. And we have a sticker with your name on it. Well, actually our name is on it. That was just a figure or speech.

*If you would like to stick around to learn more about The Weaponry and my entrepreneurial journey please subscribe to this blog. You may even find some real typos.

 

Why there has never been a better time to wear white.

Welcome to After Labor Day! This, unfortunately, is the darkest time of the year. Because now we are supposed to put away our white clothing until Memorial Day. Or until Diddy invites us to a party. Whichever comes first. I have known about this rule since I was old enough to make my own fashion faux pas. But I didn’t understand the rule, until now.

After long minutes of research (hey, it’s the information age) I discovered the Labor-Day-White-Thing was basically a mean girl rule established by a small gaggle of old money biddies in the late 1800s. They decided that they would use the imaginary rule to identify and ostracize new money ladies who didn’t know the insider rules, and wore white on the wrong days. Yet over time everyone adopted this standard.

How lame is that?  

This isn’t a rule. It’s a joke. Or at best a standard we follow without reason. With this knowledge, how do you pick out your clothes tomorrow?

There are two ways to view these widely followed, but non-rule-rules.

  1. We can adhere to them, just like everyone in-the-know.
  2. We can see them as the gifts they are. And use them to help us stand out from the masses.

When I was in college I had a track teammate named Alex Mautz. Alex liked wearing shorts so much he decided not to pack them away after Labor Day, or Halloween or Thanksgiving. In fact, Alex wore shorts every day for an entire year. Which is no big deal if you live in Florida. Or Ecuador. But we lived in Madison, Wisconsin. Where I experienced -26 Fahrenheit without windchill. Alex turned heads everywhere he went. Not only was he memorable, he provided total strangers with an instant conversation starter from November through April.

One of the most important things we do at The Perfect Agency Project is find ways to help people and organization stand out from the crowd. That’s how you build a memorable brand. And if you want to be noticed, cultural and category norms are a gift.

White wedding dresses don’t stand out. Red ones do. I have seen thousands of diamond engagement rings that all blend together. But my sister Heather’s stands out. Because it’s an emerald ring. Chick-fil-a is one of my favorite restaurants. But unlike most restaurants, it isn’t open on Sundays.  Yet Chick-fil-a is the first restaurant I think of every Sunday (can I get an Amen?).

If you, your brand or business want more attention, find a convention and start doing the unconventional. There are opportunities all around you. If you would like help finding your white clothes after Labor Day let me know. We could grab some caramels and talk.

Why everything you’ve thought about Wednesday is wrong.

Today I’m starting a new Days Of The Week series. It focuses on the importance of each day of the week. The series will feature all of the best known days, including Monday, Friday and Saturday. But it will also touch on less popular days like Tuesday. But we are going to start the series with Wednesday. (Did the name of the post give it away?)

At The Perfect Agency Project we have deep experience in both branding and positioning. After performing careful research, analysis, a few focus groups, an online survey and interviews with key stakeholders, it is clear that Wednesday needs to be repositioned.

As the middle child of the work and school week this day has often been overlooked or forgotten. To most people Wednesday is Hump Day. It’s best known for being the half way point in the week. It represents the weekly hill to get over in order to start the downhill slide to the weekend.

This is so sad.  It is a horrible commentary on life, work and school. A week is not something to get through. To endure. Or to survive. The week, my friends, is your life. If you want the week to go faster and you’re thankful to be halfway done, you are saying that about your life.

Instead of calling Wednesday Hump Day, I would like to call it Evaluation Day. It is the day that we evaluate our progress towards our goals. It is the day we check to see if we should change something in our approach. Or if there is something more fruitful we can do in the last days of the week to make it a week to remember.

After beginning the week with goals in mind, on Wednesday we should take corrective action to make sure we achieve those goals and accomplish what we set out to accomplish. Wednesday should help you build momentum that you can carry through Thursday and Friday. Not to mention Saturday and Sunday, which apparently I just did.

I love me some Wednesday.  It represents the meat of progress. It is the full engagement day. Because it is equidistant from both Sunday and Saturday. Which allows us to keep our focus on the business at hand. If you are not finding the reward in your Wednesday you should find another way to spend your week. A new job, new career or new quest could completely change the way you see the day.

Wednesday is the American Midwest. Hardworking. Honest and real. Wednesday is farming and manufacturing and producing. Wednesday is where great things happen. Wednesday is not the fly-over states of some New Yorker magazine cartoon. (Which is really funny by the way).new-yorker-Map

So let’s all have a great Wednesday. Or Evaluation Day. Or Momentum Day. Or Full Engagement Day. Or maybe even Midwestern Day. Let’s make this the best part of the week. Because whether or not you realize it now, Wednesday is your life.