The C-Word

A woman shouts, ‘’Fire!’’ in a crowded theatre. The audience stampedes for the exits and in the ensuing panic two people are crushed to death.

The theatre burns to the ground and the woman is acclaimed as a hero.

A woman shouts, ‘’Fire!’’ in a crowded theatre.

The audience stampedes for the exits and in the ensuing panic two people are crushed to death.

There is no fire and the woman goes to prison.

The message is the same in both cases.

Only the context is different.

So clearly context is every bit as important as content when it comes to delivering a message.

They're really two sides of the same coin.

Given that the effectiveness of one is inextricably tied to the other, I find this next statistic odd.

Google “content marketing” and you get 19,400,000 hits.

Google “context marketing” and you get 37,900.

Does this huge disparity help explain the repetitious drivel, inane listicles and dull platitudes that make up so much of what passes for content?

It's hard to believe there's no connection, data usually means something.

Branding in Five Words

Legendary branding pioneer Walter Landor once said, “Simply put, a brand is a promise.” When I first came across this, I fell in love with the poetry of it.

I was disappointed when I read the quote in context: “Simply put, a brand is a promise. By identifying and authenticating a product or service, it delivers a pledge of satisfaction and quality.”

It gets the job done, but it’s pedantic in comparison to the short version.

This version must have become embedded in my subconscious, because while conducting a branding workshop for a client I had a spontaneous moment.

A brand, I asserted out of the blue, any brand, can be reduced to five words: A sign and a promise.

This owes a lot to Landor's thought, but it adds something too.

It unites the visual and non-visual elements that make up a brand.

The sign is how you recognize a brand.

It’s usually referred to as a logo, but thinking of it as a sign encourages a different point of view, to some advantage.

Think about the attributes of a sign.

The first attribute is legibility.

Is it easy to read?

The second attribute is clarity.

Is its meaning unambiguous?

The best signs or logos share a simplicity that enhances their clarity, like the Nike swoosh, or the FedEx wordmark with its negative space arrow.

I don’t need to show them.

You can already see them.

They’re perfect because, to paraphrase Saint-Exupery there’s nothing left to take away.

When you think of a logo as a sign, you’re seeing it more like a consumer will experience it.

Not as a piece of marketing driven design, but as a guide to getting what they want.

There’s another advantage to thinking of a logo as a sign.

Signs can be metaphysical.

As in: “A sign from God” or “A sign from the universe”.

This type of sign is more than instructional or informative.

It carries a hint of promise with it.

And a promise is the core non-visual attribute of a brand.

Iconic brands have promises that can be summed up in a word or two.

Coca-Cola - refreshment

Volvo - safety

This degree of distillation doesn’t happen overnight.

And a promise of a single word, isn’t suitable for all brands, especially B2B and financial brands which typically market more complex offerings.

But brevity is what all brand promises should aspire to.

As Seth Godin said, “If you can’t state your position in eight words or less, you don’t have a position.”

Eight words or less is a good starting point (even if it took sixteen words to say it).

Defining its promise is the most crucial task a brand faces.

Because after reflecting on my spontaneous exclamation, I realized a brand is not just a sign and a promise - a brand is better positioned as: The sign of a promise.

That promise needs to be enticing enough to make a difference, yet credible enough to be believed.

And most of all it needs to be kept—your customer is trusting you on that.

Real Street Marketing

The weather has been unseasonably warm here, culminating in a record 25.5°C on March 22. It’s like Christmas in July for one of Toronto’s much maligned and marginalized groups; the panhandlers are back out in force.

These other boys of summer may be underrepresented, but they are highly vocal.

On my 10 minute stroll to, and from work, through the Annex, one of the city’s prosperous but still gritty hoods, I get a snapshot of marketing at its rawest.

Panhandlers don’t have MBAs or Clios; they have a split second to engage you.

Selling yourself is never easy and as with any trade there’s a knack to it, maybe they can even teach us marketing sophisticates a thing or two.

A Sherlock Holmes story, The Man with the Twisted Lip tells of a protagonist leading the double life of a London beggar while making enough income to also be a respectable country gentleman.

He accomplishes this by virtue of, “A facility of repartee, which improved by practice and made me quite a recognised character in the City.”

The Holmes story chronicles a practitioner at the pinnacle of his trade.

Unlike the first guy I usually pass.

A 20 something, who gruffly demands “Spare change?” and whether you give him any or not, follows up with “Nice day” making both phrases sound like a proposition.

He certainly lacks the silver-tongued delivery of the man with the oversize white cane.

 “Can you spare a nickel a quarter a dime or a dollar?” delivered in the breakneck rhythmic sing-song, if not the accent of a Kentucky horse auctioneer.

I appreciate his attention to syntax, in putting quarter before dime to improve the flow, almost enough to overlook his breaking one of salesmanship’s fundamental rules, by asking a yes - no question.

Then there’s the nondescript guy although that’s not entirely accurate, because I can describe him as the guy with the best tagline.

“Something is better than nothing.”

A line I appreciate enormously for being both optimistic and philosophically unassailable.

I usually pass the 40 cent guy on the way home.

His strategy is one of deceptive simplicity.

“Do you have 40 cents?”

I admire the cleverness of this, because first, by asking for a specific amount he legitimizes his request to some degree.

(A specific amount surely infers a specific purpose.)

Second 40 cents cunningly requires a minimum of 3 coins, greatly upping the probability of getting more, because who is going to search for exact change?

Do I give them money?

Sometimes yes. Sometimes no.

I side with the character in Tom Stoppard’s Indian Ink, who asserts:

“Begging is a profession, like dentistry, like shining shoes. It’s a service. Every so often you need to get a tooth filled or your shoes shined or to give alms. So when a beggar presents himself to you, you have to ask yourself, ‘Do I need a beggar today?’ If you do, give him alms. If you don’t, don’t.”

Put another way, if I’m not in the market for what you’re selling, it doesn’t matter how good your presentation is, I won’t be buying.

But that doesn’t mean I won’t appreciate a good one.

And I can think of a few brands that don't handle their messaging with such smarts.