Project Clarity

…to a more permanent home:

http://www.opusresults.com/blog/

The steps you take to brand and market your professional services firm is not radically different from your steps up the corporate ladder. In either case, it’s typically not an overnight accomplishment – and if it is, you’ve probably done something disingenuous or perhaps illegal to get there. Is that the “60 Minutes” van outside?

Selling services is selling people – primarily yourself and secondarily your firm as a group of diverse people with a similar, cohesive goal. So, where do you start building that brand and planting the seeds that grow the elusive word-of-mouth success?

Start with your cube neighbors. Do they know what you’re about and what you’re doing? Can your employees, associates, partners, accountant, attorney, and current customers recite your elevator pitch? Are you staying in contact with them with news, developments, accomplishments? It’s a captive audience and they can be your biggest advocate.

Don’t set off the BS alarm. Start with talking in plain English, everywhere. On your website, in written and oral communications, in your collateral material. Buzzwords are for you and your comrades. The people don’t get them and glaze over when you use them. Not a good thing.

This is the first step to what James Gilmore and Joseph Pine term “exceptional authenticity” in their book Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want. Gilmore and Pine remind service providers in particular that “people tend to perceive as authentic that which is done exceptionally well, executed individually and extraordinarily by someone demonstrating human care.”

Become that helpful, smart coworker. Be a thought leader in your area of expertise and give away your ideas at every turn. Become an expert and the media, other influencers, and eventually the right customers will stop by your cube and form a line.

Use the web as a forum for raising your stature. Blog, write and distribute white papers and case studies about what you’re doing (psssst – see the MCT blog). Speak at events. Call reporters back within five minutes when they do call you.

Tell your story until your voice fails – or until you are promoted. Individual self-promotion and professional services self-promotion is essentially the same thing. The key is creating and refining efficiency in your message – meaning discovering and developing your spiel, then creating all the fun stuff – logos, taglines, websites, printed materials, ads and press releases.

The day of my first-ever trip to NYC was the day after Sonny Bono was tragically killed on the ski slope. The page one image of the tabloid showed a distraught Cher overwritten with the bold headline, “I’ll Miss You, Babe.” For some twisted reason, that paper made it into my briefcase and back home to NC. And, no, I don’t still have it.

Now the Post is adding video to its web presence. Look out tmz.com, there’s a new sensationalist on the block. With tmz’s new television counterpart, once again the Post is behind the technological curve, but this foray should be interesting nonetheless.

My buddies at My Creative Team have moved their exhaustive blog (of which I’m a contributor). If you’re not a subscriber yet, check it out. If you have been following it, reset your RSS feed; it’ll be worth the effort.

NFL Films, the $50M 300-employee adjunct to the hallowed league has filmed every game since 1962 on moody 16mm film. If you’re not familiar with the unmistakable three-quarters speed replay with orchestral background music, then you’re just not a football fan.

Now, according to Wired, the group is working to digitize the entire collection. So far, they’ve made it back to 1992 and have 110TB of football history-slash-data.

The driving reason for this is to provide easily editable footage for the expanding NFL Network, which opens the vault for fans of this stuff. Let’s hope going forward they never change that “mythology” achievable shooting with authentic 16mm film.

Newspaper and local radio advertising continue to lose ground over the the first half of 2007, according to Nielsen. Both are victims to the Internet’s rise as a news and entertainment go-to source.

While overall spending is down 0.5%, Internet, national magazines, national Sunday supplements and outdoor are on the rise, as is smaller-market spot TV.

Ted Mininni, president of Design Force, writes in the Marketing Profs blog about the tendency to put a new face on a product to try to achieve instant fresh appeal with consumers. Whether is repackaging, a new package design, or a new name to the same old stuff, this represents a quick-fix mentality that often leaves out the insight of the buyer.

A better use of time and resources, writes Mininni, is to get clear, usable feedback from customers:

Getting consumer feedback is a vital aspect of conducting an internal audit. Spending time, capital, and human resources on this exercise, if done thoroughly, is never fruitless. Never a waste of money. It’s the best bang for your marketing buck.

In fact, the results may surprise some executives and lead them back to reinstituting those products, those policies, and those brand values that made them successful in the first place.

Check out the results of the three-minute online survey of marketers from My Creative Team.

• Study: Agencies’ Size Matters Little to Marketers – Marketing Charts
  (tags: advertising blog marketing agency)
• Knowing What You Stand For – New York Times
  (tags: branding)
• No Wonder Professionals Are Taking to Online Networking » Small Business Trends
  (tags: web2.0 social networking)
• Branding 101: Branding Basics to Help Your Business | Small Business Marketing & Branding
  (tags: branding entrepreneur)
• More Business Blogs to Welcome » Small Business Trends
  (tags: blog entrepreneur)

• THINKing » Top 20 One-A-Day Small Business Marketing Vitamins
  (tags: advertising entrepreneur marketing pr)
• 10 Tips for Keeping Your Blog Fresh | Marketing Profs Daily Fix Blog
  (tags: blog blogging marketing)
• New York Agencies Need Breathing Room with Fewer Bucks – MarketingVOX
  (tags: advertising marketing)
• Five Tips for Finding Writing Time | Copyblogger
  (tags: blogging productivity writing)
• Six Reasons Why Every Brand Needs a Message (and a Messenger) – Articles by Marketing Profs
  (tags: marketing branding)

AdWeek reports that the NFL is taking back control of its website from CBS Sports. For the fan, this means increased film footage, both current and archival, which represents a tremendous plus.

For the league, this represents the next step in gaining control of what could be considered its intellectual property.

“The ability to control your own destiny and be able to experiment and invest in building a robust platform was something we thought was best doing by ourselves,” said Hans Schroeder, vp and gm of NFL.com. “It was hard to figure out a way to evolve the platform when you’re doing it through a third party.”

Let’s hope this great league walks the fine line of journalistic integrity in reporting on itself.

• The Entrepreneurial Mind: Technology Can Make a Difference, But Focus on Its Efficiency Ratio
  (tags: technology entrepreneur)
• Cheap media, cheap ads
  (tags: sethgodin advertising)

Seth Godin blogs on cheap advertising (off-peak AM radio, inexpensive banners), raising the question: do cheaper media choices dictate sub-quality messaging? I don’t think so. Clear messages can cost much less than even the cheapest media campaign; many times it’s just a matter of investing a little time and brainpower.

Even the classic “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” cable ads resonated.

• Run Windows on a Mac / Wired How To’s
  (tags: windows mac)
• 5 Tips for Knockout Testimonials | Copyblogger
  (tags: marketing writing copywriting)
• Get Insights and Build Relationships with Online Communities
  (tags: web2.0 public relations)
• THINKing » Widgets + Ads. Who Would Have Thought?
  (tags: advertising technology web2.0)
• Communication Overtones: Why PR Sucks at Blogger Outreach
  (tags: web2.0 public relations blog blogging)