Kibbe on Marketing: Born or Made?

The question, of course, is whether entrepreneurs are born or made.

That was the very discussion I had with Mary Ann Kristiansen, executive director of the wonderfully successful Keene business incubator, Hannah Grimes Center and its affiliated Hannah Grimes Marketplace.

Over a delicious lunch at Luca’s Mediterranean Café overlooking the preparations for the Keene Pumpkin Festival, we tackled that question. I’ve never thought of myself particularly entrepreneurial; starting a business always seemed like a job for someone with more backbone that I. You know the type – since they were children, entrepreneurs always seems so clever, so common-sense smart, so quick to pick things up. They just seemed to see the world through a different set of eyes.

While Mary Ann agreed there are certainly those preternaturally gifted people, “entrepreneurship” is something that can be and is created by the rest of us, perhaps even more often than I thought. She used herself as an example, and her current position at the incubator. More times than not, our life circumstances change and we find ourselves propelled in a direction we would have never considered in our wildest dreams (or nightmares, for that matter).

But at what point to the scales tip? When do we nascent, even fretful, entrepreneurs take that huge leap forward to becoming our own boss and start our own business?

I’ll be honest, I don’t know the answers. For me, at this point, I love to use my strengths and creativity to not only do better the things I excel at, but to try new things and create a shared success for myself and the organization I’m a part of.

However, there is something hugely appealing in having a second revenue stream based completely on my own skills – namely writing and desktop publishing.

How about you? Where do you stand? Were you born or are you being made?


On Thursday, Oct. 27, from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. Hannah Grimes Center in Keene will be presenting “Four Things to Consider Before Starting Your Own Business Workshop.” Visit www.hannahgrimes.com for details.

Cindy Kibbe, an editor for a New England business publication for nearly a decade, can be reached at cindykibbe@comcast.net.

Kibbe on Marketing: Ironing out Your Branding

I had the great pleasure of attending a brand development workshop at Savvy Workshop, a printing and marketing firm in Manchester, N.H., on Oct. 14. The attendees ranged from relative newbies like me looking to learn some basics to longtime pros wanting to raise the bar. I want share with you three pieces of information I learned at the workshop.

What is Branding?

Presenters Laurie Peyser and Lisa Adamaitis of Savvy Workshop, along with owner Lisa Landry, said branding is a bit amorphous. They said branding is “love” -  “the way a company makes you feel, the perceived value and the loyalty it instills in you.”

To me, that means branding is the persona of the company. Not only is it what you see (e.g. logo, tagline, etc.), it’s what you don’t see – namely, the corporate culture that inspires employees to continue the message.

The Savvy pros said one of the keys to building a brand is conveying your company’s “distinctive,” “valued” and “tablestakes” attributes. Briefly, this means the values that your company wishes to communicate, the values that build brand loyalty with customers, and the values that those customers are asking from you.

For me, I’m hoping as you read these blogs you’ll get my experience and integrity wrapped up in my passion for writing. In fact, I’m testing out taglines of “Writing is Our Passion” and “Why Write When You Don’t Have To?” or even “Creativity To Go.” (Send me an email and let me know what you think.)

Consistency

One of the biggest signs of both good and bad branding is consistency. Everything from the colors used in the logo to the font used on company stationery – not to mention how employees act during downtime on a business trip – must remain unified and must reflect the image the company is trying to portray.

I’ll use fonts for a basic example. There’s an old but good rule-of-thumb from the media world that says you should never have more than three different fonts in any of your communications. Personally, I think two is plenty if they are distinctive from each other. It might seem obvious, but using the same font face or two in all your company communications is essential to basic branding. With the myriad of fonts available you might be tempted to play around with them (how fun is it to have “Jokerman” with “Chiller?”) but don’t. Rather play to your heart’s content BEFORE you hang your shingle out there.

I know at some point I’ll have to match up the font on the business card with the brochure for the boutique writing consultancy I’m creating. Things have grown like wildfire in the last few months, leading to the cards having been made well before the brochure. That and I’m stuck with a box of cards I’m not yet ready to throw away.

Here’s another tip from the newspaper world – choose a typeface that has several minor variations – bold, condensed, italic, etc. That way you’ll look consistent but have some play.

Continuous improvement

Another concept Savvy brought up was the idea of branding always being a work in progress. That’s not to say a company is changing their branding frequently, quite the contrary. It means continually testing the current brand to see if the message received is the one you mean to send.

Times change and your company changes. Is it time for your branding to change to match your current and future direction? What are your customers saying about your company? Are all these concepts working concert with one another?

Take Savvy itself. Landry said the firm’s original focus was largely on short-run printing. Over the past few years, however, the company has evolved to offer a much more comprehensive menu of services that includes marketing, Web design and, yes, brand development. Hence, the firm evolved from Savvy Printing to Savvy Workshop to give a better sense of the services under the Savvy umbrella.

The workshop concluded with a hands-on exercise to come up with some branding basics for a terrific nonprofit, Girls At Work, www.girlswork.org, which seeks to empower at-risk girls and women through the use of power tools. Founded by Elaine Hamel, a contractor, this is a wonderful and worthy organization that deserves your attention.

For more about this branding workshop and other information, visit Savvy Workshop at www.SavvyWorkshop.com.


Cindy Kibbe, an editor for a New England business publication for nearly a decade, can be reached at cindykibbe@comcast.net.

Kibbe on Marketing: When Good Commercials Go Bad

A good commercial, ad or other marketing campaign is one that engages you in an interesting, even funny way and ultimately persuades you to buy whatever the advertiser is selling.

There are many, many examples of great campaigns through the ages – from Coke’s iconic “The Pause That Refreshes,” Berma-Shave’s road signs, Wendy’s “Where’s the Beef,” Justin Long ala Mac vs. Mr. PC – the list goes on.

A newer trend aims to tell a little story spread over several commercials. Like a mini-series, the hope here is that you’ll keep your eyes open (and hopefully your wallet, too) for the next 30-second installment.

But in many advertisers’ efforts to grab your attention, the characters or the story takes on a life of its own. The product message becomes diluted or lost altogether.

Take Geico’s Caveman. A talent, metro Neanderthal takes righteous exception to Geico’s sign-up practices that were “so easy, a caveman can do it.” Brilliant – the first dozen times. Then the commercials transform into a sort of “Encino Man", culminating in an erstwhile but ultimately horrendous TV series pilot.

Now I thought virtually all of the Caveman bits were hysterical, but at some point, Geico got lost and the commercials became more about the Caveman and less about car insurance.

You might also remember the road warriors that stayed at Holiday Inn, where little by little we learned the boss had a penchant for aromatherapy, whale songs and cage fighting. (“He’s a bad man.”) Again, we became far more interested in the characters, not what they were pitching, which was supposed to be a great room and great services for business travelers.

And if they’re not careful, Progressive’s “Flo” is on the fast-track to jumping the shark, not insuring against it.

Who’s doing it right? Oddly, it’s Geico with its adorable Gecko. He’s a weird messenger, but he’s always on message. The Capital One Barbarians are doing the same thing – funny but informative and sticking to the message.

Granted, these are big, million-dollar Madison Avenue campaigns, but the good and the bad both have a lesson for small-business owners. Be funny, be informative but stay with your message for all of your marketing.

PS…I realize I’m dating myself, but does anyone remember that 1970s Duncan Hines commercial with the lady wearing a mask made from a cake mix box, “Boo! Does this scare you? I used to be afraid of baking…” That one DEFINITELY qualifies as only of the “ugly.”

Cindy Kibbe, an editor for a New England business publication for nearly a decade, can be reached at cindykibbe@comcast.net.

Kibbe on Marketing: Rock My World

The most difficult task marketers and business owners have in getting their message out through the press is capturing an editor’s attention enough for that person to publish something.

I hate to tell you there’s no magic formula that will ensure a pitch will get picked up for a full-length feature story or any other type of mention. There are, however, some good rules that will greatly increase your chances of getting published.

Choose your publication wisely: Once again, the selection of the right publication for the right message is key. Not all trade news is fit for mass consumption. Unless it immediately saves grocery money or some other “home and hearth” barometer, most trade news should stay in trade journals. And believe me, there is a trade rag for EVERY pursuit. Don’t believe me? Check out the North American Sea Glass Association, seaglassassociation.org. Yes, they have a newsletter.

Know thy editor: As the old adage says, it’s not what you know, it’s who. Pick up the phone. Give one of us a call. We’re nice people, hungry (read: desperate) for the next great story. Your company might be it. Editors, believe it or not, are just like regular people. We have likes and dislikes (although nothing should ever even approach bias), sectors we’re skilled at covering, and those we don’t really follow. If you build a rapport with an editor, learn a bit about what he or she covers, you’ll have a head start on your next pitch.

Only earth-shattering news gets above the fold: If you really want that front-page coverage, you’ve got to move the ground under me. As I said above, pitches that represent something within my geographical coverage area, something of immediate value to the greater community and something utterly innovative – that’s what makes me sit up and take notice.

This is tough to figure out from company owners’ perspective. Of course, they are going to think whatever they do is front-page news. Let me tell you now, it isn’t. Here’s an easy litmus test: talk to friends at church or at the gym. Are they impressed? If so, go for it. If not, it’s probably not feature-friendly.

For me, most of my headliners were about issues, not a specific company or person, but there were a few that fit the bill. I wrote a headliner about a prostate cancer resource and support group. Why? It was run by several former CEOs who were survivors. I wrote for a business pub, so that was a great fit right there. It was also astounding how many men came down with the disease. It was also timely; I was able to get the piece printed in time for the September awareness week.

Another was a local company done good – my favorite. This company didn’t do just “good,” they were named by Fortune as one of the fastest growing firms in the country. Again, it was the right coverage area, it was a company most folks hadn’t heard of and they did something truly amazing.

Of course, there were hundreds of others, but the common thread here is uniqueness – real, honest to God, rock my world uniqueness.

The last page still has news:  A newspaper or magazine has more than one page. Marketers would pitch me about a new company that opened within my coverage area. Great, but it’s still probably not worth a feature. That said, if it’s kind of cool, say a new dining concept or an unusual service business (No, not that! Say, mobile cockatoo grooming), it might get a little news brief or, at the worst, an item in the “seen and heard” section. Other marketers use those sections deep in a newspaper to prospect for new clients, while other publications might scan those sections for story ideas that work for them.

Landing a feature on the front page is more of an art than a science, but keeping a pitch focused, targeted and truly unique will often get the attention of an editor and result in that elusive coverage.

Cindy Kibbe, an editor for a New England business publication for nearly a decade, can be reached at cindykibbe@comcast.net.