Intuitive Plan » marketing

Invite and Include.

Rosemary Senjem — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 16:54:02 +0000

You are cordially invited to …

The act of inviting is more than a script on a note card. Invitation is an attitude of inclusion. When we really take this on and see ourselves as the grand host of the party, we start saying things like:

Please join me for…
Won’t you join us on Friday for…
I’d love for you to meet my friend…
I know someone who can help you with that. Why don’t I set up a lunch with the three of us…

Invite. Make connections. Maybe there is an opportunity for you. Maybe there is an opportunity for someone you know. The attitude of inclusion opens us up to the Flow. When we are open to the Flow and help others connect, we become known as a hub for connections. Others in tune with the Flow seek us out, because we are like-minded people. Next thing you know someone is inviting and introducing you to a great connection.

What Is Marketing Anyway?

Rosemary Senjem — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 09:29:18 +0000

Here is how you often hear marketing simplified by experts:

Get your name out there! (ok, become known, but for what?)
Go after your niche (well of course! nothing is for everyone - who are your raving fans?)
Have a consistent brand presence (yes, consistency is the foundation for establishing your integrity)
Go viral (this one really feels yucky to me, how bout you? when news travels by word-of-mouth it is the sign of success -- why associate success with disease? I prefer to call it "making friends.")

Marketing is Three Things

Shining
Making Friends
Nurturing Your Fans (some would argue this is really Public Relations)

Shining

Shining is intangible. It is not a budget line. It is not magic strategy or formula. When your light is really turned up as bright as it will go, words are not even involved. People notice the brightness of your shining as soon as they lay eyes on you. Before you've spoken a word. Before you've given your elevator speech. Before you've given them a brochure.

Here's the rub. Even if your elevator speech is polished and smooth. Even when your brochure is drop dead gorgeous. If your shine does not show up, your lack of true confidence or possibly a lack of integrity turn people away.

On the other hand, if you are shining , without an elevator speech, without a brochure, you will still attract people who feel the excitement at witnessing your radiance.

(For real life practice and support with shining, join us for this workshop.)

Making Friends

When you set out to make a new friend, you are at play. You are attracted to the other person for some reason that feels good, feels mutual, feels like a match.

Of course, you might meet under the pretense of something in common like knitting or chess, but you know you don't feel this resonance with every knitter, every chess player.

This resonance is the basis of a peer-to-peer relationship that is the root of all great business interactions.

Friends are often interviewed to learn more about someone. Testimonials are interviews of your company's friends. They know the company. They feel they have shared in the Spirit of your company. They have a relationship with the company.

When you make friends for your company, your company is becoming known to people who will be proud to know you and tell others.

I can hear the doubtful voice, "What if I need lots of customers? Do I have to make friends with all of them?" The short answer is yes, you do. The good news is that its a lot easier than you think!

It is possible to make friends through a web site, through packaging, by the way it feels when people enter your store.

To me, marketing is all about SHINING. It is about being a beacon. Make it easy for people who are already looking for you to find you. Show up where they are and offer what they seek from you.

When these seekers discover you, they are the first to shout out, "Hey! Look what I found!" And if what you offer is a strong match for them, you have just met a new raving fan.

Nurturing Your Fans

So now you have this fan base, what are you doing with them? The number one thing that fans want to do is CELEBRATE! Find ways to support them celebrating your company, your product and themselves. Anything you can give your fans that they can share with their friends supports their fan-ship relationship with your company. Coupons, frequent flyer miles, rewards programs and referral discounts are ways to support your fans. Inviting their participation with each other is another way to support their fan-ship. This can be an essay contest, a video ad contest, invitations to product testing, even a simple party in their honor.

Creating Your Identity 101

Rosemary Senjem — Fri, 04 Nov 2005 20:10:49 +0000

What's in a Name? And What's that Blob Sitting Next to Your Name Anyway?

Logos, names and branding are all part of stepping out in the world and saying HERE I AM! It doesn't matter if you are a solo street vendor, a not-for-profit agency or a fortune 500 company. Your identity is a proclamation about yourself. Now this sounds fairly simple. Yes? Just as simple as deciding what to wear for a press conference. ? Hmmm. That's quite a bit more complicated than trying to figure out what to wear to work. I think you see the quandary in the metaphor. There are expectations from your press conference audience. There are expectations from your self. There are expectations from your colleagues and your competition. And then there's the message you are trying to get across. You don't want your big announcement to be lost to an inappropriate hairdo! Now you have some choices here.

You can go to quickie-professionals and have them tell you what they think you should look like with very little input from you.
You can look for someone who understands and loves you, but doesn't know anything about press conferences and see what they say.
You can find someone whose style you like, who knows what they are doing and is willing to find out who you are and create something that will really work for you.

That's not a blob! That's my logo!

You want a logo that "feels good in your gut," as we say at Hand Spun Digital. A good logo process involves introspection, discernment and play. It produces stunning results. By trying to skip the process and go cheap, basically you missed out. Here's the scoop on the cost of creating a logo. The better YOU are at getting to your own essence and articulating it, the easier the sensitive artist can play with you to render that essence in a shape, then add color, then add styling. The easier it is, the faster it goes, the less it costs. Your first step is to review the work a range of artists and designers to find someone whose style you like and with whom you want to work.

How do you choose the artist?

Here are the things I would weigh in choosing an artist or graphic designer:

Range of abilities and style. Review the artist's portfolio. What appeals to you? What does each style feel like to you? Does this artist already exhibit a range of styles that feel compatible with your company?
Communication. Do you feel an affinity with this person? Do you feel they understand you when you are talking with them about the project? I am talking about that basic good-energy-we-could-work-well-together feeling. Logo development is all about creating an image that communicates a feeling, a vibration. If there is tension or misunderstanding in your process, your logo will be costly with many revisions and unlikely to satisfy.
Grasp of the concept. Ultimately the artist needs to create an image that conveys the essence or an important part of your message. If you are not clear about your essence or message, the artist may be able to help you or you may need to bring in another person to facilitate your discovery process. If you do bring in another person, it is valuable to ask the artist to be a witness to your process. They will learn a lot about you and your organization that is beyond words to the very essence.
Experience with creating Logos. You can tell a lot from the way the artist executed the pieces in their portfolio and presented it to you. Creating logos is a niche in the world of graphic design and illustration. It is not familiar to everyone. See Functional Parameters of a Logo for more information.

NOTE: I am not at all suggesting that you toss the amateurs out of the running. Rather if you want to work with someone who does not have the full skill set needed, anticipate needing to support them by pairing them with a creative director to get professional results. A professional graphic artist who can act as your creative director will have their own process for moving you through introspection, discernment and play to get a logo that "feels good in your gut," as we say at Hand Spun Digital.

About Introspection, discernment and play.

Introspection: Contemplation of one's own thoughts, feelings, and sensations; self-examination. Discernment: To perceive or recognize as being different or distinct; distinguish. Play: To have a really good time doing whatever you want, while free of obligation. At Hand Spun Digital, we specialize in playing our way to great logos quickly. We ask our clients to play with us in an empty dance studio. Yes, a dance studio. In fact some of the instructions we send out prior to this meeting say, "Please wear comfortable clothing so that you can move freely." What?! No board room? No flip chart brainstorms? Have fun? But of course! To us, logo creation is about finding the joy, passion and love in the organization or product. The best way we know to do that is to play with people. Now for us, play is actually a tool. It helps us see and understand our clients. We support their introspection and true desires through play as they explore the essences of their ventures. We use activities gleaned from an improvisational discipline called InterPlay?, which uses familiar forms of light physical activity. While witnessing all this creative expression, we gain insight to discern our clients' unique attributes. Our artists doodle and play through the process. Favorite shapes are noticed and played with further. We play and pick fewer favorites until one emerges that truly "feels good in your gut." It almost feels like a creature has been born. Only then are we ready to render this shape on a computer. After such rich beginnings, color and style preferences are found with ease.

Assessing what you've got along the way

At some point in your process, you will need to review designs and make a choice to move forward. You?ve got all these designs. How do you know which is a good idea and which will end up feeling trendy in a year? Here are some things I?ve learned to help me work with artists and designers to really get to the essence of the message in the logo. When talking about the designs, speak in the first person and take ownership of your observations. Other people will see things differently from you. That doesn?t make them wrong. It makes it another perspective. Remember the story of the group of blind men gathered around the elephant arguing over what kind of beast they had encountered? To avoid their confusion and arguing, consider each perspective a piece of the puzzle, instead of contestants for the "right" answer. Some puzzle pieces will strike a chord in the whole group and you will suddenly be able to see what they see. That does not make this the "right answer." Rather it means you have a big piece of the puzzle. It helps to actually respond to the design aspects in a sequence:

Concept: Maybe they executed it poorly, but the idea they are trying to get across is a good one. Notice good ideas, no matter how they are rendered.
Shape: Shapes are the framework for the whole thing. They can be rendered in black and white or colors. It is useful to know that 5 basic shapes in their multiple forms have universal, almost unconscious meanings around the world. (From the work of anthropologist and author, Angeles Arrien. Signs of Life: The Five Universal Shapes and How to Use Them.) Square = Stability. Circle = Wholeness. Triangle = Goals and Dreams. Equi-distant Cross = Relationship. Spiral = Growth.In each of the designs you review, what does the shape feel like to you? What story does it tell? I realize this is difficult because you are looking at a colored image. Try printing the images in black and white for shape review.One of the difficulties of a detailed illustration logo is that the shape itself is so complex that scaling, rendering in black and white, and on different surfaces is difficult.
Color: Color is a world in itself. In years past we were limited by the processes that were affordable in the printing industry. Today, there are resources for full color digital printing that are sometimes more affordable than older 2-color processes.Nonetheless, your shape MUST work in black and white first. (This does not literally mean only black and white. It also includes all shades of grey.) People still photocopy and fax things that will instantly convert your beautifully designed full color logo into black and white. The name of the game is READINESS. Think of your logo as an athlete who needs to be agile enough to handle any situation and still represent your organization or product well.So you?ve got a shape working in black and white and now you?re looking at colors. Here?s another distinction. A single color has different values. Think Blue. Blue can be light blue, navy, royal blue, etc.Colors also have emotional meanings, although these vary from culture to culture and region to region. Here are some web sites that discuss the meanings of colors: http://www.infoplease.com/spot/colors1.html http://www.web-design-uk.biz/web_design/psychology_color_marketing.htm And if you are really into it and not trusting your own intuition, buy the e-books called, Colors that Sell: Tried and Tested Color Schemes and Global Color: Clues and Taboos from Color Voodoo Publications. http://www.colorvoodoo.com/cvoodoo.html
Style: Describe the style ? what does it remind you of? Is it modern? What gives you that impression? It is possible to really like a shape and not like the style that it was rendered in. Focus on how the style you see supports or detracts from the feeling, the message, the story, the roles of your organization or product.
Overall: When discussing an image overall, focus on these characteristics and how they support or detract from the feeling, the message, the story, the roles of your organization or product.
1. Contrast
2. Boldness
3. Softness
4. Balance
5. Spacing

Now let?s say you?ve talked about all these designs. Have you landed on a winner? Great! Or are you just exhausted from talking about it and want to move on? If so, stay the course. You are learning more about what it is you really want and need. You are actually preparing for a more robust conversation with your designer.

Special Alert: Avoiding the "5-legged horse with the head of a cat" Syndrome

If you are a group and not an individual seeking a logo, I strongly recommend that you engage someone to facilitate you all in a truly collaborative group process. If that is more than you want to do as a group, decide upon someone you are willing to trust and delegate the task to them (to work with the designer and report back to you periodically for feedback). Then let go of whether or not your feedback has any influence on the design. If you decide to delegate, you must understand that you are bowing out of a very dynamic process. If a second look says you really want to be involved well, by all means, GET IN THERE! Note: Avoid micro-managing from a distance at all costs. That?s the quickest way to create a 5 legged horse with the head of a cat that cost $10,000.