Innovation brings progress and huge profits. Many say innovation is the best way out of the recession. But innovation is risky. Innovative companies have to bear the burden of teaching their audiences how to do things differently. Super innovative companies can also be super vulnerable.

Is your innovative company at risk of profiting or failing? How can you build up for success and reduce your chance of failure?

The secret to success is Mental Models. You need to understand the mental models of your customers.

What’s a mental model?

A mental model is a though process that someone habitually goes through when performing a task or responding to a situation. A person’s morning routine is a mental model. A person’s reaction to an email from an airline is a mental model. The way someone goes through a grocery store during her weekly shopping trip is a mental model.

Mental models are the frameworks of thinking that define how people act. The fact is, life is too busy and complicated to approach every situation afresh. So all of us form models in our heads then behave as if those models are the same ever time.

Old mental models and new products: A risky combination

Then, all of a sudden something new happens. A new fluoride wash is invented which requires a change in your morning routine. That airline starts emailing useful travel tips, not spam. The grocery store reconfigures its layout.

Companies that haven’t determined their core customers’ mental models are at risk of bringing new products to a market that is simply not prepared to deal with it. So any innovative company must understand its customers’ mental models before they start selling their innovations.

Now you know what mental models are and  how important they are. Stay tuned for our next blog in which we explain how to determine your customers’ mental models.

Education is important to us all and a strong basic value at Zoyo Branding. One recent project that we performed was editing the 2012 Clinical And Special Needs Assessments Catalog for Riverside Publishing, a division of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is one of the leading educational publishers of textbooks, instructional technology, assessments and other educational materials in the United States.

This catalog is a useful tool for educators as they strive to provide the appropriate resources for children with special needs. Check it out to see what kinds to tools are used in the public schools in the United States today.

I was recently hired by a new client to work on a copywriting project. They hired me because their previous writer just wasn’t getting the job done. I came in, and quickly turned out some powerful, effective writing. “How did you do it?” they asked. They’d given me the same information they provided the other writer. What did I have that that the other person didn’t? What I had was a method. I’ll share that method with you.

1. Start with the problems

The first thing you have to do when starting a new copywriting project is to understand the customer’s problems. Learn what isn’t working out in those customers’ lives. OK, you don’t need to psychoanalyze their whole life, just the problems that your client’s product or service addresses. Do your client’s company bring organic foods to inner cities? (Problem: it’s hard to find organics in convenient stores.) Do they make a device that prevents officemates from seeing what’s on each others’ computer screens? (Problem: Privacy in a cubicle.) Have they figured out a way to keep preschoolers from losing their mittens? (Problem: So much to think about when taking care of a toddler!) Every successful product meets a real need. Know that need. Understand it. Feel the pain, then feel the pain being relieved with this product. Then write about those feelings.

2. Get a snapshot of the market landscape

Next, find out about what’s going on “out there.” Every customer need exists in a larger context. Let’s say your client produces sustainable bamboo wood flooring for new construction. You need to understand that bamboo is getting hugely popular, therefore on an upswing. But new construction is still in the doldrums. Your copywriting needs to acknowledge these trends.

3. Define the product positioning and personality

Okay, another word for product positioning and personality is brand. I said it. Brand. You need to understand your client’s brand. If they haven’t defined their brand, you have to at least give it a stab. The quickest, easiest way to help your client narrow in on a product personality is to ask them to give you feedback on the list of Brand Archetypes. The archetypes they respond best to are very close to their brand’s personality whether they’re ready to make it official or not. That archetype will be good enough to get you close to the right voice.

4. Specify the product’s features and benefits

You need to know every feature of your client’s product even if you don’t have the space or time to write about them all. You also need to know how those features and benefits map to the product’s personality (Step 3 above). The features that provide “proof” of the product’s personality are key features, whether they’re main features or not, they are valuable emotionally and can’t be ignored.

5.  Know your audience

This is step 5, but it could be step 1. In fact, knowing your audience is a key ingredient of step 1 because you’ll never understand your customers’ problems if you don’t know your customers. But in this step, be methodical and list out elements of your target audience. If your client has done “user personas” make sure you get to see them. If your client has done any user research at all, ask to see it. The better you know the audience, the better you will know how to emphasize your message.

6. Understand the competitive landscape

Finally, you need to have a real clear perspective on what else is out there. Who are the competitors? What are their messages and how are they different from ours? What are their features and benefits messages and how are they different from ours? List other differences such as price points, distribution methods, etc.  How do they compare with your clients distribution strategy? How does your client’s main audience differ from their competitors (is one more upscale? Does one skew younger? Is one focused more on “loyalists” and another focus on “novices)?  And finally, what kinds of messages are the competitors offering (videos, Facebook pages, web text, sales)? How do these media differ from the media your client has chosen to participate in? All this information will factor into what you include in your own copywriting project.

Facebook “likes” are the holy grail of social marketing these days. Everyone wants to gain more likes and they’re doing all kinds of wacky things to get noticed. Do you know the number one way to get liked on Facebook? The one strategy that really works?

Nope, not raffles

If you guessed “raffle off a free iPad” you’re wrong. Though everyone may want a free iPad (even if they already have one), you don’t want that kind of like. Why not? Sure a raffle may get you dozens or hundreds or thousands of likes. But they are not genuine likes. They are not sustainable likes. They do not represent the loyal following that you are ultimately trying to grow with social marketing.

Simply put, raffle likes are ingenuine.

The kinds of likes you want are genuine likes. Likes that are clicked on by people who appreciate your products, services, opinions, and content.

Create valuable content

The number one way to grow your Facebook likes is give your audience lots of things to like.  Here’s how.

Understand your customers

Learn their problems, their concerns, what makes them laugh. Are they into ironic humor or do they melt when they see cute kittens (or both)? Understanding your customers helps you create your Facebook “voice.” The better you know your audience, the easier it is to come up with comments, videos, polls, and links that they will appreciate, want to read, and, yes, like!

Be intriguing

If you run a store, snap a photo of your warehouse at 3AM and ask what you think is happening there. Learn about how people do what you do in other countries and comment about it. Show the inside of your most complicated product and comment about its “guts.” Give a behind the scenes tour at your office. Basically, show your audience things that will engage their curiosity.

Listen

Make your audience feel valued. Give them opportunities to provide suggestions, feedback, ideas and yes even complains. (Then respond to complaints to let everyone see you value that feedback and are making amends.) Let your customers feel like an important part of your organization. Because guess what? They are.

Social marketing has two huge problems.

1) Too many venues

You’ve got Facebook, Twitter, online ads—pay per click, and billboard style—plus your blog, your web site, your partner websites… you could go on and on. It’s a lot for a marketer to keep up with even if you are vigilant about keeping your brand messaging consistent.

2) Measurement tools are too complex

How do you measure success? You’ve got so much access to data, and so few hours to wade through it. With Google Analytics, Webtrends, Hitwise, (the list goes on and on) marketers today need to be jugglers and statisticians as well as message-eers.

A solution in sight from Adobe?

Adobe, the business behind the ubiquitous PDF and the app that revolutionized photography, Photoshop, has recently tackled one of the knottiest problems in marketing: how to handle the muti-tentacled beast called Social Marketing. Their new solution is called Adobe Social.

Adobe Social claims to create a common platform and workflow that puts your online advertising and analytics tools all in one place. Their platform is “unifying engagement with listening and industry-leading business analytics.” They say it’s one place to plan, manage, measure, and optimize marketing strategies.

Whew! That’s a lot. We have not used Adobe Social yet. But will look into it. If it does what it promises, this could be as useful as PDFs and Photoshop.

Naming a company is one of the hardest decisions for a startup, Just look at my company’s ridiculous name, Zoyo. (It’s a word of cheer from Africa, by the way.)

This process does not need to be confusing or stressful. Here is a strategy that makes naming a new company – or renaming and old one – a clear, methodical process. Just use this simple 4-step process.

1. Recruit trusted helpers

Do you have three or so trusted people who are in the “target audience” of your clients? They could be clinets, colleagues, or professionals you respect. Ask them to help you.

2. Prepare your list of company names

Brainstorm. Come up with a list that’s at least 10 names long. Choose your own name (or versions thereof… like Wendy’s or McDonald’s), modify words that concern your product line (think Microsoft), or just put together random letters (Xerox anyone?).  If you can’t think of any names, ponder the names of companies you like and branch off from there. Make the list long enough to contain a true range of styles and messages—all within your comfort level. Don’t keep any name you couldn’t live with.

3. Survey your helpers

This is where your friends and colleagues come in. You want to show them the list and as them some questions about it. Spend a few minutes thinking about the specific questions you’d ask:

–What does the word “{NAME HERE}” mean to you?

–What did you think of, immediately, when you first heard the name “{NAME HERE}” ?

–If you heard a company had the name “{NAME HERE}” what kind of work do you think it would do? What kind of company values would it have?

Write down those questions on a piece of paper

Then call your trusted client-type-connections.

Ask them if they have a minute to think about some questions you have, then read the list of questions to them.

Read it right off the paper.

Make no comments during your survey

Write down what they say. Don’t try to argue with them or make any point. Just write down what they say. Thank them and hang up.

4. Analyze your results

Once you’ve listened to the reactions of three trusted people, go back and look at your notes. Think about their feedback with an objective eye. For which names to they mention “meanings” that have nothing to do with the ideals of your company? Which names inspire them to restate your company’s goals and missions? If the answers of the three colleagues are not consistent, then find some other people in your target audience who’d be willing to talk to you and do the exercise again. Once you get a trend in answers, select the name that brings out the ideas that most closely match the concepts you want to express as you grow your company.

Create an effective company name

It may sound like a lot of work, but with this 4-step process you’ll have a better grasp on your name and you’ll go on to use it with confidence.

What’s the most valuable brand in the world? Your own, of course. But since we live in a competitive world, every year Interbrand, a large brand consultancy firm, puts out a report of the world’s most valuable brands.

Can you guess the top three brands?

Here’s a hint. One’s a drink and two are computer companies.

OK, no more pondering. (I bet you guessed #1 by looking at the picture.) Here’s the answer: Coca-Cola, IBM, and Microsoft. Others in the top ten (in order from #3 to #10) are Google, GE, McDonald’s, Intel, Apple, Disney and Hewlett-Packard.

 What makes a top brand?

Why these brands? It’s all a matter of the criteria used by Interbrand.

Global. For Internbrand, the brand must be global (30% revenues outside of home country and a presence in three or more continents as well as emerging markets).

Public.The brand must be public (data must be publically available on the brand’s financial performance).

Profitable. The business must be a going concern.

Well-known. And it must be known to an audience beyond its own marketplace.

Then Interbrand looks at the financial performance of the company, the role brand plays in its financial gains, and the relative “strength” of that brand.

Key elements of a strong brand:

How does one determine the strength of a brand? According to Interbrand, here are the key elements.

Inside a company:

• Is the brand clear?
• Is there a commitment to the brand?
• Is the brand responsive to market challenges and opportunities?
• Is the brand secure: that is, is it legally protected in terms of design, scale, and geography?

External to a company:

• Is the brand relevant?
• Is the brand authentic?
• Is the brand unique?
• Is the brand consistent?
• Is there a strong brand presence?
• Is the brand recognized?

Think about those criteria for your organization’s brand. How well are you doing in those categories? If you feel your brand could be stronger, contact us at Zoyo Branding.

What are “user personas,” how do you make them, and how do they help your brand? User personas help marketers (and web developers and anyone else who’s trying to understand their audience) think about their offerings in real life situations.

Organizations are often stuck thinking about their offerings from their “production” perspective. User personas allow you to take a look at your offerings from the eyes of your customers.

User personals are made-up identities, based on composites of actual customers.

How to build a user persona

To create user personas, first you have to do research. Telephone interviews, focus groups, web surveys… any way you can get your customers’ thoughts, fears, goals, and judgments, get them!

Building a user persona means taking the insights you got from your research and coming up with “types” of people in our audience. Instead of thinking about the audience segments as impersonal data, with the user personas, you get creative and bring them to life.

Your user personas are imagined composites. But they are fleshed-out people. They represent a typical customer… what they look like, what their job is, what technologies they use, how they communicate. You make up the user persona’s names. You select for them a typical jobs, a typical family situation, a typical incomes, and most importantly their typical goals.

Address big questions: the goals of your audience

Then ask yourself—and answer—the bigger questions. What are these people trying to do, ultimately, with your products or services? What bigger issues or dreams are they fulfilling with your offerings? Imagine the person’s whole life perspective–then write it all down.

Look at your interviews and pull out choice quotes. This puts actual words in the mouths of your user personas. Be sure to base everything on actual insights from your interviews. You want to document the things a real person in your audience would actually be thinking and feeling.

Sure, the user personas are made up—you made up the names, found a picture that looks like you imagine them to look like—but the goals and thoughts of your personas are based on real responses to your research.

User personas give you a reality check

What do you do with a user persona? You use it to plan your products, services, and messages. As you work on developing a new project, think about your user personas. This gives you a clear framework for understanding the motivations and issues and “whole life experiences” that go into your audience’s buying decisions.

Is what you’re proposing going to meet your user personas’ bigger goals? Is there anything about your plans that will taste sour to them?

Once you know your personas, they really help with making decisions about that features to include, or not include, in your products and how to craft the marketing messages.

Can a burger be so good you go out of your way for it? Can a bite become an event? If so, how do you build all of that yumminess into a brand? That was the challenge with Li’l Woody’s.

To define the experience in this new, organic-yet-greasy burger joint in Seattle’s trendy Capitol Hill, we at Zoyo Branding studied the “emotional promise” of the brand. After researching the competition, the market, interviewing the founders, we came up with a guideline for the emotional promise.

By the way, we would have interviewed current, former, and aspiring customers but the work we did was before the restaurant opened, so we didn’t have that opportunity.

Here’s the emotional promise we defined. These are the feelings associated with the brand… what a client will feel during and after a trip to Li’l Woody’s.

• Satisfaction: “I wanted a burger (fries, shake, what-have-you) and Li’l Woody’s hit the spot.”
• Authentic: Li’l Woody’s is “real” so everyone there can be their real selves, too
• Collective: Li’l Woody’s taps into a connection that we all share, our culture’s collective memory of classic burger joints, our collective love for burgers, our collective trend toward local choices. Li’l Woody’s brings out a feeling that everyone is in it together.
• The best possible bad: Food so good, it makes giving in to the craving worth it

Now that the restaurant’s been open month or so, does the emotional promise ring true? Surely they’ve got more than 500 excited fans on Facebook.

Brand control is one of the five biggest challenges of HR executives, according to a recent Wall Street Journal article. Managing the company’s image is key to attracting the right job candidates.

Why is brand important in HR?  The best job candidates choose companies for their corporate culture, industry leadership status, and commitment to improvement—all elements that can be strengthened by a brand.

They’re also elements that can spin out of control when the brand is not clearly defined and actively managed. That’s the source of HR professionals’ angst that was identified by the Wall Street Journal.

Job candidates can find out almost anything, from company financials to personnel gripes, on the internet. Your brand must strong enough to put these details into a larger perspective. Here’s an example: maybe financials are not so rosy right now, but that news, in the context of a brand that encourages innovation isn’t going to make a strong negative impact. A prospective job candidate will still have a positive impression of the organization if they believe in the brand.

If you want to encourage the sharpest talent, and keep your HR staff happy, your company needs a solid brand. The best people often choose the company with the best brand.

The workday was just about ending when the phone rang. It was Kathy Cox, the president of the Puget Sound chapter of the American Marketing Association. The PSAMA is Washington State’s largest professional marketing association. Kathy was calling to tell me that Zoyo Branding is a finalist in the 2011 PSAMA Pulse Awards.

Woo-hoo!

What’s special about the Pulse Awards is that they care about marketing effectiveness. Results. So does Zoyo. Here are some of the results from the work done for client Emerald BioSystems:

• New web site that allowed  gross sales of chemicals to nearly double

• Professional graphics and B&W images now reflect new “real discovery” brand and general increased awareness

• Email campaigns that cost only a few dollars to send directly influenced the purchase of major instruments

• Time on website reduced as customers find items more clearly, make purchases faster

• Streamlined back-end management integrates orders with laboratory, accounting, and shipping processes saves time, increases productivity

The Pulse Award application asked for a testimonial. Here’s the quote we submitted from our client:

“It’s been extremely helpful for us to think about ourselves and present ourselves in a new way on the heels of a new brand. Not only have the new materials been effective but the brand has helped us clarify the way we talk about ourselves as a company at meetings and on sales calls.” —Cory Gerdts, Senior Application Specialist, Emerald BioSystems

The Pulse Awards ceremony is coming up  on Wednesday, October 05, 2011 at 6:30 PM in the Bell Harbor International Conference Center in Seattle. A unique feature of this show is that attendees will vote for the award winners from the finalists that will be displayed at the event. Come by and see our display!

Would you rather be a brand that your customers “recognize” or a brand your customers “love”? What is the difference between being known and being adored? It could be the difference between “getting by” and making a profit. It’s the difference between a restaurant that has a few empty tables and one with the line out the door. For many, it could be the difference between success and failure.

Archetypal brands work because they don’t just give you an identity. They associate your brand with a deep-seeded longing that works at the instinctual level. By instinct.

Sounds heavy, and actually, it is. Still, why not associate your brand with something people long for? Something like victory, or independence, or even rebellion?

How do you get there? Zoyo branding can help you get this kind of archetypal brand. But first you must understand what it is. This slideshow, created by another branding firm, offers a graphic explanation. They call it Cult Branding. I’m not so crazy about that term, but this slideshow introduces the concept that we at Zoyo Branding deliver to our clients.

Print brochures are still a staple marketing tool. Even with the rapid rise that social media, brochures work. People want to take something in hand that allows them to consider an organization’s benefits at the time and place of their choice.

So how do you get a great brochure? Let’s look at a recent one written by Zoyo Branding. This brochure was a team effort between Zoyo, a wonderful independent graphic designer Tammy Fujihara and the attentive, cooperative client team at Bainbridge Pediatrics.

Step 1:  Know your brand

Clarify in your mind the key attributes of your organization. Are you a leader in your field, useing your resources to take your clients to the top? Are you the seeker, helping your customers find meaning? Are you a caregiver, nurturing your patrons with your products and services? If you don’t have clarity on your brand identity, the brochure will not be clear. It will be difficult for your team to know when it’s “right” or “good enough.” It will be equally difficult for your audience to really understand who you are.

Step 2: Clarify your key messages

A brochure can say a lot. But it can’t say everything. And it needs to argue your points in a way that makes sense to your audience. In Step 2,  you get close to thinking about the text of the brochure, but you don’t think about the actual brochure. In this step, the client and branding partners (such the friendly folks at Zoyo) sit down and list all of the things you want to say. Then you list three “proof points” for each message. Then you look at the lists and narrow them down, consolidating any overlaps and combining like messages. If you don’t have three real proof points for each message, you have to remove it because it’s an overpromise or it’s not “big” enough to be its own message.

Step 3: Write and design the brochure

Here a professional writer (like those at Zoyo) takes the key message lists and crafts it into a compelling message. The brochure will include all of the issues in the Key Messages doc you created in Step 2, but it won’t look the same. A list is very different from an effective argument. At the same time, a professional designer (such as those Zoyo partners with) will begin to use the branding information as well as the key messages to gather up images and create some layouts. The designer will also line up a printer.

Step 4: Edit, review, edit

A brochure is a costly marketing tool. In the end, each one can cost between $1-$5, or even more. So you  want to make sure the brochures work hard for you. You want everyone in your organization to wave it around with pride. The final step is to edit, review it with your entire team, and edit some more. When you’re happy with it, the graphic deisnger will user it through the printing process. A week or so later, you’ll have a stack of great brochures that your team will happily pass out and your audience will eagerly read.

A lot of organizations do marketing without doing branding. For those companies, every marketing effort is like lifting a heavy weight over their heads unassisted. Each time they do outreach, the organization stretches, sweats, heaves, and sometimes puts its back out.

If a company does branding first, it’s like lifting that weight using a fulcrum and a lever. Raising  that weighty marketing project becomes a whole lot easier. When you have  a brand—that, is: documented key messages, know your brand personality, and understand your relationship with your customers and community—your marketing efforts can all pivot on that powerful base.

The effort you need to raise that project into the air is exponentially less. And you can reach a much greater  height.

A brand is like a fulcrum-and-lever device. With a solid brand base, you can do big things with less effort. Contact Zoyo branding today and see how we can make marketing easier for your organization.

What was the influence of Steve Jobs? All of us who spent the 80′s and 90′s working on Apple projects know he was the vision behind so many great technologies we use today (whether or not they’re Apple products… so many of Apple’s competitors simply followed the tracks he made in the snow). One of our colleagues, Mickeleh, created this thoughtful video as we ponder his recent resignation from Apple.

What Mickeleh doesn’t mention in this video is Steve’s huge influence on marketing and advertising. Just as he simplified and smartened technology, he simplified and smartened business communication. Here’s what I learned in my years of working on Apple marketing:

1. Know your brand

First and foremost, every company must spend time thinking about and defining their brand. Everyone on the marketing team–and even in the whole company–must really understand this brand. What is the voice: is is serious or humorous or casual or formal? What are the brand values: are they speed or convenience or ease or rebelliousness?  Know all of this, write it down, codify it. This is the foundation of all marketing.

2. Always speak in the voice of your brand

Once you’ve defined the brand, live within it. If your brand, like Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream, is humorous and natural, always be humorous and natural. If your brand, like Apple’s is simple, smart, and clean, make all your communications simple, smart, and clean.

3. Be creative–within the boundaries of your brand

Creativity captures people’s attention. A message or “look” that is different, new, or wild stands out. Be innovative in your messages… but be innovative within the confines of the brand that has been carefully thought out in step 1.

These three simple steps are very rarely carried out in business communications. But Steve Jobs took the time and effort to always see they were obeyed. This taught me worlds about communication and branding. The least I can do is share it with my current clients.

Oh, and Steve Jobs, we’ll miss you. Thanks, Steve, for everything.