Spend a lot of money on Branding!

I firmly believe that the image of a successful organization is vital and valuable. It’s also very important to protect your companies image and identity – I say that in terms of the message that is being sent. A Good brand image (referring not just to the logo itself) sends a message to the subconscious of the viewer that creates a memory and enforces the value that your company represents to them.

With all of the above in mind, I also believe that a brand and a logo is something that should not be over thought. We created our new brand image by accident.

We had our design team messing around during some down time with literally no expectations. This logo was presented and we said “that’s it!” We’ve launched our new logo along with color scheme and website today. We have much work yet to be done, but we are happy with it so far. Tell us what you think?

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About us:
redwall LIVE is an Indianapolis Marketing Company that provides campaigns, strategies and tools for successful marketing.

Those people on the road – are they serious?

How about those liberty tax guys? Is that a good Idea? We had a discussion in the office today, as well as in a client meeting about this topic. No one had anything good to say about the idea. Everyone however had something to say. Case in point – If you were going to mention the names of Tax places in the neighborhood it would surely be one that you were aware of.

With the often misfit looking character fully dressed in patriotic halloween gear waving at you how could you miss them? As they call on you to immediately stop by and have your taxes prepared on the spot – does it increase purchase intent? Sure, but does it also increase perception of quality? It doesn’t take a marketing genius to know that these people are not the specific people that you would prefer preparing your taxes (only as a general rule). Unconsciously does it give you peace of mind to know they are there or are you worried when they seem confused that you wave back? The concept is certainly a debate to us because awareness is one thing that has been accomplished – and no we are not responsible for this one.

Now is class important? Yes. When you do something that brings awareness to your business it is good. We think that if perception is negative it could bring equal negativity with brand perception. If the face of your company does not even appear to have showered or meet the presentation level expected of the character they are playing, you might want to reconsider how much you are putting into the presentation. Experiential Marketing and Mass Awareness are all good things, but if the perception delivered is negative, maybe you’re digging a whole while you are at it… After all, everyone likes lady liberty but no one really a fan of uncle sam.

The Story of a Victim of Marketing

Recently someone was offered an opportunity to be in front of hundreds or thousands of eyes by placing a marketing message in a place with a lot of traffic or visibility. The individual selling the marketing product talked about an impressive number of “Impressions” that the product will allow them. In the marketing industry we refer to impressions as the number of possible times your ad can be seen, or the potential number of eyes that will see it divided by two (assuming every viewer has 2 eyes). The customer considering the marketing product was a reputable company with a quality product and good reason to grow. They were very excited about the marketing product the service provider explained to them and they quickly purchased the service that would yield these “impressions” that were described to them.

They invested thousands of dollars and received a very low return on investment, but it was a return none the less. The Sales person convinced them they should continue to build momentum and they agreed. Following another return on investment (Some industry people call this ROI) they learned that the advertising paid for it self but with a very low return rate. After assessing the total investment in marketing and growth in their company they were somewhat disappointed.

Considering the little return they got on their investment they ended up deciding to call on Redwall LIVE : Experiential Marketing. They liked that redwall LIVE had a creative non traditional approach with and emphasis on Experiential Marketing. They appreciated that Redwall LIVE insisted they prepare a marketing plan that determined where their “impressions” would be found so that they could focus on getting more relevant impressions to their business. They also liked that Redwall LIVE had a reason for doing everything that they did and it wasn’t just about mass awareness alone but brand messaging and long term goals. They agreed that 1000 relevant “impressions” is better than 10,000 irrelevant impressions. They also agreed that the value of word of mouth and third party viral promotion was priceless.

This story is very general but it is all too common. Be careful you don’t become a marketing victim.

Social Media and Experiential Marketing Collide with a Cause

At Redwall LIVE we are always trying to support a good cause, in our personal lives it is no different, but we were looking for really creative ways to do a focused campaign for Non Profit’s whose campaigns we could really connect with. In an effort to give our talents to the community I approached CFI (Community First Initiative) about serving them and putting together an experiential campaign to raise money and awareness for their program that makes a lifelong impact on high school students. They Partner with Schools to provide their 40 developmental assets mentoring program. They welcomed us and we put together the following event. The campaign is  Experiential, Interactive and Involves Social Media in a major way. I’d like to especially thanks Pet Supplies Plus Stores and Deep Ripples: an Organic Search Marketing company for supporting this cause as sponsors.

Darren Heil (Director of CFI) and I (Owner of Redwall LIVE) will be living in a van starting this Wednesday (December 9th 2009)… that is an old 70s chevy van that has nothing but an old couch and a couple bucket seats in it. We’ll be bringing a web cam and a couple laptops with air cards so we can still work, and so we can tweet!

Above us will be a digital billboard that will be displaying frequent updates and directing drive by traffic to take notice of us in the van and donate at www.forkout.org. Forkout.org is “the giving engine of Redwall LIVE”. We created forkout.org merely so we could create experiential events just to support a cause. CFI is the first.

Local Media is covering the event including an article in the IndyStar. Fox 59 picked up on the story as well.

This is really made possible by social media to spread the story virally through pier to pier communication. Social media is a must with Experiential Marketing. We will be interacting with donors and viewers all over the world via twitter and the hashtag #forkout (some tweets will even make it to the billboard). Many will watch the event unfold via webcast at forkout.org. Thanks to bloggers like Kyle Lacy, Lindsay Manfredi and myself the story is finding its way to several popular blog sites and tweeted by many. Twitter Enables us to have real time conversation from people at their desks, in their cars, with their families or at work and connect to thousands of people all over the world. Simultaneously the webcast will invite people at work to watch frequent 9 minute webisodes as well as “a day in the life” through the whole procedure. Blogging shares the story of our cause and our campaign with the world in detail. With all the support and integrated social media, we estimate we will be connecting to over 150,000 people over the course of the 10 day experience.

Our goal is $25,000 in 10 days… we only need 1000 people to donate $25. But consider this. $25,000 is 10% of the annual budget of CFI, so how can we carry this on beyond the 10 days to help students?

The Marketing Tool Belt: bring the whole thing

Since we are approaching 2010 a lot of businesses are thinking about their overall plan for the year. Hopefully a 2010 marketing plan is part of that. Marketing is like a tool belt and for most big jobs there are many tools that are used. It is rare to accomplish anything worth doing that can be done with one of the many tools alone.

As you scour the web for various blog sites about marketing you will find many topics. Here are some of the main sets of tools you should be using in some way.

1. Social Media: You’ll find some good stuff, but you’ll potentially get board as well because there are so many people talking about social media, and saying the same stuff
2. Experiential Marketing, Guerilla Marketing, Non Traditional Marketing: A lot of times you will find info on this presented as more of a novelty or a historic list of ideas. I don’t find a lot of blogs that advise you on how to implement this type of marketing into your business plan but they are out there (this one for example is intended to be such a resource).
3. Direct Marketing (Direct Mail, Telemarketing, etc.): Not a lot of blogs about this, frankly it just doesn’t tend to be that interesting. I’m not suggesting these tools are not useful, but there not much for the history books either.
4. Public Relations: Publicity is something that in some form every business uses and very few understand. I highly recommend you study applicable tips on PR and Publicity for your business.
5. Branding and Design: You will find blogs on this for sure, and some very interesting to the eye. The consistent appearance of your brand is critical to your success.

Above all of these is Marketing Strategy. Yep, if you don’t have a marketing strategy I would consider your marketing status to be in bad condition. Why and how do you use each tool? Make sure first that you have a healthy mix of the tools of marketing, not just for the sake of the tools themselves but for an effective position in the market. You’re goal is to purposefully build your brand value or increase sales, regardless of other factors in the market (positive or negative). Engage the senses, connect with your audience, advertise, make news and ask for the business. You just can’t do all of this by limiting it to one simple method.

My last piece of advice, don’t use too many tools. What I mean by this is don’t overcomplicate things, and don’t jump from plan to plan. Create a strong strategy that has a centerpiece and a balance of surrounding marketing tools and commit.

If you need help, we’d like to. Let us know.

Daniel Herndon

http://www.redwalllive.com

Guerilla Marketing, What does that really mean?

You know small and large business alike, we all have to have someone manage our marketing budget. It is important to make sure that we maximize our efforts with what is in every case a limited budget. There’s a few blogs and books out there that talk about small businesses needing to embrace Guerilla Marketing. What does that really mean though?

I asked a few people on twitter to see what a few other people thought. Here’s what I got:

From: @OTGApril
@danielHERNDON Any unconventional marketing technique designed to produce maximum results using minimal resources (i.e. money & materials)

From: @trusthomesense
@danielHERNDON I think Guerilla = non-traditional ways to target audience with msg, many times w/o target being aware.

I liked both of these answers. One from an Experiential Marketing Colleague and the other from a business perhaps doing some of their own Guerilla Marketing.

There are several ways to accurately describe Guerilla Marketing, but the recurring theme is that Guerilla Marketing takes a non traditional approach to the task at hand because the traditional resources could yeild the desired results. Perhaps you want to impact the nation with a new product brand in 60 days and a blanket ad campaign is unachievable. Maybe you are the little fish in a big pond so you have to use non traditional methods to rise above the resources of your competition, or the size of the market. Maybe you’re networking, and using social media. Maybe you are putting together an integrated campaign that get’s people charged up so that word of mouth carries your message. Perhaps thinking outside of the limits of traditional advertisement will open up some new avenues to spread your message.

When your dollar has an end, you have to think about how your marketing efforts are going to return results. Because when your resources or manpower is depleted, you’re done. Even Mr Clean know that a good Guerilla Marketing campaign captures a response that you can’t do with traditional methods, and if you can, not for the same ROI. On this day before Thanksgiving, take this time to be thankful for the business you’ve gained thus far and think about how you will maximize your results and decrease your waste to accomplish your marketing goals in 2010. What are some ideas you will be using in 2010?

B2B Experiential Marketing

I spoke yesterday at Spinweb about marketing your business experientially.  After I updated an older power point presentation with a couple examples and case studies I realized that I had no B2B examples in my presentation. Wouldn’t you know it Michael Reynolds asked this very question! I promised I’d share some examples, and here is the one (borderline) B2B sample that I talked about.

We  have a customer in Idaho that is a not for profit organization that is dedicated to developing resources for autism leaders (Teacher’s education curriculum and certification,  etc.). There is a void in the education system for educators that are prepared to handle the teaching and learning challenges associated with Asbergers, Autism etc. Our initial goal it to present the curriculum to as many Colleges and Universities as we can. The challenge: How to get the faculty to pay attention to our postcards, emails and advertisements. What we’ve begun to do with our Experiential Approach is to ignite young people that are passionate about the cause by building student philanthropy groups through offline communities, brought together by an exclusive online community. We’re targeting specific college communities. We’re promoting through a viral video that carries the message of connecting individuals experiences to the needs at hand and inviting them to play a role in the solution.  Several small events will happen at these campuses, etc. Student feedback is vital and in most cases the major driver in the selection of new curriculum at a College/University. We studied this market, and determined this approach. The principle of the matter is engaging the target industry’s consumers to drive them to the business by sharing their experience. Ultimately businesses make their decisions based on what allows them to grow… customer demands.

Let me share a national example for you that I’ve enjoyed. I am a big fan of the Fox show 24 and have written about it before. They frequently are featuring Sprint product in the show, but another product they often show is Cisco – the name will be prominent on the screen showing some of their high end business productivity tools. Their target client: businesses. The Cisco product is blatantly placed into the environment we imagine, which makes us envious of how we can use the same tools in our office or share the experience.

There’s also a great story about Intel using experiential marketing here.

The question is where does you client spend their time off the clock? They watch 24, they go to cigar bars or sushi bars, they enjoy certain types of music and entertainment, etc. Everyone needs an experience, both at work and at play.

NEWS: Marketing Your business Experientially

Why keep all the good ideas to yourself? Experiential Marketing can refer to both a specific method of marketing as well as a general mindset. We believe that every business of every size can benefit from some Experiential Thinking.

That’s why I will be speaking on Experiential Marketing today at the Spinweb office. Owner Michael Reynolds and I got to talking and thought it was a great idea. Spinweb holds regular seminars on many productivity tools to add value to business owners and managers on productivity tools, branding, marketing resources and more. Make sure to check them out. Here’s some info about today’s discussion on Experiential Marketing:

Events

Marketing Your Business Experientially

Date: October 1, 2009
Time: 3:30 pm – 5:00 pm

Location: Show map
SpinWeb Indianapolis Office
8580 Cedar Place Drive
Suite 116
Indianapolis, IN 46240

Contact: MIchael Reynolds
Phone: 317.324.1100
Email: michael@spinweb.net

Tickets:
Price: $15.00 – Register Online

Guest Speaker: Daniel Herndon, redwall LIVE Marketing

Interested in learning more about Experiential Marketing? Join us for a presentation by Daniel Herndon. Daniel is the founder of redwall LIVE Marketing — a firm that specializes in Creative and Experiential Marketing. Today, buyers have thousands of ways to communicate and receive information. Experiential marketing is creating direct interaction with your target audience by building an experience that will impact them emotionally to build your brand.

Topics covered will include:

Traditional Vs Experiential (Values and differences)
How most marketing companies have fooled you
Focus on Customer Experience
The Principles of “Experiential Marketing”
Experiential Marketing as a mindset
Experiential Marketing as a tactic
Case Studies

I think some of you are HIDING behind advertising!

I’m going to make a bold statement. I think that all too often companies put out superficial advertising and marketing as a protective barrier between them and the audience to be marketed to. They are afraid of exposing their brands weaknesses in real life or fear failures in their market approach or the risk of public rejection. If we send out direct mail we don’t have to see how many people reject it – we only ever see the hopeful 6% responding. It’s out of site out of mind, and we are out of site, we don’t have to let them into our companies true culture. The loss is the brand’s worth to real life people – people who are not changing their lifestyle because of commercials but experiences.

I would like to plead to you, Mr Brand Ambassador that you show that confidence in your brand by audaciously including your clients lifestyle, habits, loves and personal emotional aspects into your marketing. Why Mr Car Dealer do you yell on TV and talk about deals and spend millions on Ads… Why not consider giving a car to the local mission to meet a need or offering a free loaner car to people that come in for an oil change. Wouldn’t that be a better image and AT LEAST equally effective per dollar spent? You are then handing the mic over to them to tell about you – and that speaks louder and is a more appealing sound. Actually, Mr Car Dealer, a November ’08 Gallup poll ranks car dealers/salesman pretty low in trustworthyness, and those customer experience + advertising methods can’t be helping. (Credit to Pinny Cohen for some good customer experience comments about car dealers)

Is your brand important and compelling or just a nice label with well targeted ads? Are you afraid that if you hand the mic to your customers that they will ruin your reputation? Do you feel obligated to focus your marketing dollars on visibility over experience? Be Bold, be experiential, invite them to live it out.

Trump Inspires with Experiential Marketing

I decided a long time ago that Trump was one of my mentors in business. He’s a risk taker and a brilliant businessman. He’s generated a level of success to the point of being very influential, regardless of if he’s the biggest in his field or not. Since I’ve read some of his books and followed his career I’ve discovered that he is brilliant at marketing and even experiential marketing. Experiential Marketing is not the easy way, or the path of least resistance. It requires differentiation in a perfect scenario. Trump bought 40 wall st. For 1 million and ended up ending up with a 550 million dollar asset very quickly – after everyone else in the business said it was the wrong way to go. He went against the grain, he did not take the easy way out or go by the book. He went with his gut and what ignited passion.

On March 11 1982 The Learning Annex, one of Trumps earlier successes, is celebrating a milestone. Trump decides to throw $10,000 off the empire state building to give back to the community and celebrate the 10,000th enrollment at The Learning Annex. Naturally, he expects some publicity out of the deal as well. He tells all the news media, they love the story, and the building gets crowded the day of the event in anticipation of the dough soon to drop. Just before Trump and his people could get to the building with their bags full of cash the bank on the first floor gets robbed. Unfortunately for the thieves, they exit to a huge crowd of cops (along with the crowd they were there to control) and they arrest the offenders. Because of the ruckus that had started to occur the officers prevent trump from going to the top floor and he never gets to throw his gifts to the city. They were hauled off in squad cars for safety. The next day the story was on the front page of the New York times and papers across the country. He received calls for interviews and appearances giving him the best publicity of his lifetime and boosting his career. Many people wanted to be a part of this experience in person and it inspired the media as well. When you make a splash, people notice.

Years later Trump meets Mark Burnette, the producer of the hit series “Survivor” at a shoot on his property. Mark presents an Idea to Trump about a show he wanted to do. After a bit of short discussion Trump shakes Burnettes hand and agrees to go 50/50 to launch “The Apprentice”. The next day his agent insisted he call it off – but he shook the guys hand so Trump wouldn’t back out. The show became a phenomenal success and now Trump is a TV star. Every week as the show airs people put themselves in the position of the contestants and imagine what they would do if in their shoes. We root for our favorites and complain about some. Through all this Trump is continually being positioned as one of the premier business men in the US. Not only does Trump get paid several million per show, but he continues to build credibility and recognition for his company. People watch for entertainment but also get engulfed and emotionally invested in the success of the contestants. People get to be a part of his business in a sense, experience it from the inside vicariously through the NBC show. It’s not an advertisement, but it is. Its an experience and we love to watch it.

Daniel Herndon | Redwall LIVE Marketing

O:317.663.7605 | http://www.redwallLive.com