Flash forward, and we have more choice than we could ever need. Do we really need 285 varieties of cookies, 75 of iced tea, 230 soups, 175 salad dressings? We define happiness as having choices, and yet give us too many choices and we get stressed and would rather walk away and not make a decision than put in the effort required to make an informed choice. This is the subject of the book “The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less” by Barry Schwartz.

Happiness is when we feel like we have the time, the knowledge and the choice required to make the best possible decision. We need filters to help us make these decisions and live in that yellow zone. The Happiness Zone.

As a brand, you have to help people wade through choices and find you. You also have the following related problems to solve:

1. People don’t trust nameless corporations and advertising messages anymore (if they ever really did).
2. People are looking for ways to simplify life, and often make their buying decisions by tapping into trusted sources. According to Forrester Research, “83% of online consumers trust the opinion of a friend or acquaintance who has used a product or service”
3. Your brand is not special to your customer. It’s not the center of their life, as it is to you.

So what should brands do? How do you sell products and have your brand heard over the constant drone of your competitor’s messages? How do you cut through the noise and connect with your customer and have them ‘hear’ you.

Traditionally, brands have done some user and market research, built a product, advertised it’s Unique Selling Proposition (USP) and repeated the process to keep the product fresh and relevant in the market. This is a throwback to the industrial revolution and no longer relevant. In this world of flux and speed, the touch points with the customer need to be more natural, immediate and constant. Your brand needs to meet your customer where they are most comfortable, and truly engage with them.

Introducing social media. Social Media is the big broad term that takes many forms, from Facebook to a white label wiki. From media sharing sites such as YouTube, LastFM or Flickr, to life-sharing sites such as Twitter or MySpace. Forget stale forums where people post questions and no one relies, GetSatisfaction delivers the promise of community, by allowing companies and their customers to have lively exchange about products.

As brands grapple with the concept of social media, some view it as just another channel to advertise. But that’s one very thin slice of the possibility pie and dates back to thinking from a 100 years ago. Yes, you can create brand awareness, but how do you actually get your customer to care about you, and make you their preferred choice? Instead of using ad-copy, social media allows you to have a more real, meaningful engagement with your customer. You can now discuss things with your customer. And use language that is more natural and accessible to your customer about every subject that matters. To you and your customer.

The wide, wild, undefined world of social media is in it’s infancy. And brands that ‘get it’ are starting to see it’s true potential. It holds promise for creating deeper relationship between organizations and the people they serve, whether that organization is an online company, a bank, or a non-profit organization. If you have something to promote, and communicate about, social media will be a vital part of your communication strategy going forward.

The concept is simple, really. Don’t look at social media as an advertising vehicle. Instead thinks of it like a party. Your customers are attending this party. You are attending the party too. You are not the host, you are just a participant, as are they. Conversation is lively, noisy and on various subjects. How will you join in? How will you introduce yourself to others? How will you mingle in this party, get people to get to know you, appreciate your presence and really want to keep in touch with you, even outside of this party? In short, how will you become the life of the party?

Guido doesn’t get far anymore. People see through the greasy sheen of falseness. Here’s a suggestion: be authentic, and useful. Be(come) the nice guy. The brand that is helpful, and confident. Knowledgeable in what you do, and not arrogant. Proud not full-of-yourself. Communicative not sale-sy. Marriott has joined Twitter and won kudos for creating great conversations with travelers around the world. Even this hot dog vendor in Vancouver has leveraged their geek central location, to talk to their customers on Twitter with great success.

Before you jump into the social media pond, consider how best you will join in the conversation and what do you have to offer.

Here are a few questions to ask, that will help you humanize your brand, and make authentic decisions on his/her behalf:

1. What would your brand be like at the party? (E.g. The clown, the shy one, the chatty kathy)
2. Where would your brand hang out? What online communities would she or he be drawn to?
3. Who are your brand’s best friends? Who trusts your brand and loves them?
4. What are brands that your brand would buy? (Example: Starbucks or the local neighborhood cafe?)
5. What will your brand do or say at the party, that is typical of her/him, that will make people remember her (in a good way)?

On a somewhat related note, you will find DesignStamp on Twitter, but you won’t find us on Facebook. We haven’t figured out why/how we, as a design studio need to be there. And we refuse to attend the party unless we know that we’d look good going in. So we are talking about it internally, dressing for success (a new website is in the works) and making sure we are drinking the Kool-aid we serve. Be authentic, be useful.

We encourage you to contact us and let’s get to work on your social media strategy!

1. Keeping a customer is cheaper than finding new ones.
2. If you have high churn, you are viewed as selling a commodity not a brand people care for. You will need to start to compete by lowering price which is not a winning game unless you are a volume behemoth like Walmart.
3. Happy customers are more likely to become loyal customers, and loyal customers tend to become cheaper to maintain than servicing the needs of newbies that are partially willing to “try” you out.
4. History is littered with brands who became too big for their own shoes, and started to forget about who made them big in the first place. The happiest brands are those that keep their customers close, and value their experiences as they do their bottom-line.
5. What can your brand do, to make people say “I love [name of your brand here]“. Make people become irrational about their feelings about your brand. The glow that radiates from people in love is infectious. Try telling a Harley-lover that a Honda is better.
6. In the lean times, it’s your brand advocates that will stick by you. Loyalty is difficult to create, and once you have it, you must hold on it, by frequently checking every customer service point within your company (At Rouxbe, the CEO of the company reads every contact form that comes in).
7. Marketers should be part of the design process, so they understand the product that is being built and who it will satisfy. Slapping on marketing messages after the fact doesn’t work. It’s simply too late.
8. Designers should be part of the marketing process, they are trained to be stand-ins for the end-user. Tap into their knowledge to keep the design and the message unified. Apple does this best.
9. Do things differently. The best way to beat your competition is to stand out and be different. Be less annoying than your competition (maybe my bank machine can start to remember what language I speak, and not ask that question each time?), be more caring (don’t tell phone customers they will get through faster by staying on the line, offer to call them back) and more human (WestJet flight attendants crack jokes when making the same old boring “fasten your tray tables” announcements).
10. Be your own customer. Use your product before you unleash it to a market. Design things for yourself, and design the after-sales service for your family and friends. People who don’t know jack about the intricate details about your product. You owe them a good experience.
11. People talk. And in a myriad of new ways. If you run a business that has customers, you ought to be keeping an ear to the ground to listen to what people are saying about you. You should know about the various (new) ways people communicate.

And now a story:

I am on the phone with Fido (BC, where I live, has only 3 major cell phone carriers, sad). I have a nasty customer experience. The agent is unprofessional, absent and not helpful. He has asked me to repeat my mobile number 3 times now. I have been handed from one department to the next, and no one seems to be able to be able to tell me why my account balance is not being accurately displayed online. The call ends with me hanging up in frustration when they finally decide to blame my computer (Mac) even though I KNOW that there is no way that could be the problem.

My tweets during this call:

Sweet revenge.

Flash back, it used to be that when we would have a bad customer experience, we’d grumble about it to others, if the topic came up. Now, I tweet.

Generation Is uses Twitter. A Tweet refers to messages exchanged on Twitter to let people know what you are doing right now. Or what you think or feel about a particular subject. (Learn about what is Twitter and why it’s so popular and stats on it’s usage). So get searching and find out what people are saying about you on Twitter!

So be good to your customers. Bad stories are more fun to tell than good ones. Revenge is more important at times than spreading joy, and more and more,  your consumer understands the power she wields, in this hyper-connected world.

To those who care to know (and Starbucks, if I were you, I would be searching Google everyday to find out what people think of you), here are the reasons why I have made it my mission to seek out alternatives sources to feed my caffeine addiction:

1. Starbucks coffee sucks? To me, the coffee has always tasted burnt. I am not a coffee connoisseur like the good people at 2paths but even to my relatively unsophisticated coffee palette, Starbucks never felt ‘good’.
2. It all began with ‘No free internet’ (Starbucks has changed that, but it’s too late)? Ok, so this is geek reason, but it had a ripple effect that lead to #3. Basically, I don’t understand why I would have to pay a zillion dollars for a “tall” coffee and then pay for a service that should be as basic as providing lighting and mind-numbing muzac.
3. I found ‘others’. Leading from # 2, I started looking for cafes that had free internet. Free internet lead me to cafes with great coffee! Take 5 café in Vancouver is great, as is Caffé Artigiano which has amazing coffee (and terrible baked goods). Lesson: sometimes your ancillary, supporting services are the reason why people buy into your primary brand offering.
4. I heart community. In this world of remote offices and telecommuting, cafés are the new networking opportunity. Starbucks tries to create a strategically comfortable environment with its big arm chairs and carefully positioned mood lighting, but I am thinking that it takes more than just soft cushions to make for a successful third place ! For example: Take 5 café lends its location to geek events in the evenings after open hours (fringe benefit: geeks tend to drink lots of java, and do so during these events too). Result: Now geeks flock to the café at all hours of the day! If you are looking to hire your next freelance coder/designer, chances are you will find them huddled in the back of the café, working on their laptops and guzzling down their third cup of java. Lesson: big brands need to work harder to give managers the freedom to operate each store as an independent business and make ‘authentic’ community contributions not the catch-all ones that are dictated at a corporate level.
5. Anonymous service. I have worked in retail and I have worked for a large global brand, so I know that customer service training can sometimes takes the humanity out of that service. It all becomes a timed science of making eye-contact within x number of seconds and saying thank you in just the right way. Again, I suggest that Starbucks and every other mega retail brand consider going back to the idea of creating “villages” around their stores. Look to hire people who genuinely enjoy people. Look to make each store unique, different and while it can have the comfort of leveraging familiarity of the same logo, same product, it should be courageous enough to respond to a particular community’s needs. Treat that 65 year old customer differently than the 30 year old who buys a low-fat, soya latte with extra foam from you every day. Keep your humanity, and don’t correct the customer when they order a “small” coffee.
6. Laughable brand extensions. OK, I guess I am a bit of a brand Nazi but I don’t want to give my hard earned money to a brand that thinks it’s so beautiful that it should be able to sell just about anything with its logo on it. How many types of tumblers does this world really need? What do plush toys have to do with the primary product i.e. a decent cup of coffee? Lesson: create a brand that is known for what it does best, keep a laser focus on that strength and don’t deviate from that focus. You seem wasteful and self-congratulatory when you overdo the logo placements.
7. I like local more then I like global. When I go to Europe, I resist the temptation of going to any American brand restaurant. Sure it’s easy to order a Royale with cheese at McDs. And it’s a linguistic and cultural challenge communicating with the owner of a petit bistrot. “I am asking for a medium rare steak but I would prefer if the cow were not still breathing when it is served to me”. But McD’s ain’t Paris. And Starbucks doesn’t feel local. If I want to feel posh, I go to 49^th Parallel. I want to feel like I am doin’ the drive so I go to Calabria café with its somewhat garish, fake Italian statues and unpretentious attitude. I want the local environment to impact my coffee experience. I don’t want the same lighting, same music and same artwork comfort but maybe that’s just me.
8. I want to curb the infection and not encourage it. Even if you love Starbucks and can’t live without it, you too would admit that the sheer number of stores that have cropped up in the last few years is a bit nutty. Do we really need a Starbucks store across the street from..another Starbucks? Vancouver seems to be hardest hit by the fungal growth of the green logo stores. “I’ve never seen so much coffee in all my life. The whole town is on a caffeine jag,” said Bette Midler, when she performed in Vancouver.
9. If I were a coffee shop I would be. Picture it, a little cafe with the bubbly, friendly tattooed crazy coffee girl (barista would be too pretentious, and not sure why she is a girl! Frued?). The smell of food and coffee would be mixed and the air would be warm and the music would be Radiohead-ish. Strange but hey, that’s me. I tend to try and use my money to vote up the brands that reflect who I am (or want to be). Little bit of narcissistic anthropomorphism . If I were a coffee brand I hope I am not seen as a Starbucks. Apparently a study of 8000 consumers found Starbucks to be “arrogant, intrusive and self-centered“.
10. I can’t stand the thought of sameness. I said it time and again in this little list, but one of the reasons that I am so fascinated by brand creation and management. I think we need to challenge how good brands are built. The whole idea of sameness is unnecessary. The idea of wrapping a marketing message around a product is such a throwback to the industrial revolution. We are now living in emotional times. I think the future of successful brands flips the equation on its head. As this brilliant article suggests, grassroots brands are cropping up that start with an emotion or thought and then manifest into a product that reflects that emotion best, not the other way around. Starbucks started that way but along the way it seems to have shifted its focus from coffee and experiences around that drink, to growing exponentially. Something got lost along the way and got replaced with this sameness/safeness that I question.

Some random examples for inspiration:

• Here’s a challenge. Help sell a car, co-designed by Hitler and built in a factory by Nazi Germans. Bring it to America and make it successful. Oh yah and this car is almost half the size of the popular cars. DDB not only rose to the challenge but crafted a marketing campaign that mobilized a whole new generation to give up the big brawny American cars of the 60’s and instead love this new car that appealed to their intellect. DDB created print ads that celebrated the smallness of the car, while being tongue-in-cheek, irreverent and smart.



• Oprah has built a multi-media empire by providing transformational experiences to her viewers. She repeats phrases such as “Live your best life” ad nauseum just to get middle America to chant after her and change behavior. Then she leverages that across media and product to deliver ways to actualize that message. She has even cloned herself with making celebrities of people who evangelize her message. Dr. Robin, Dr. Phil and Rachel Ray are all Oprah creations.



• Nike gives the couch potato, an athletic goal at NikeTown. Hershey stores transforms everyone into kids. I spent an hour in the store in Vegas without realizing it. From gigantic chocolate machines, to a movie theatre with those scary M&M guys, to marveling at the multitude of ways they sell “souvenirs”,  Hershey may as well charge admission to go into their store, let alone outrageous prices for colored pieces of candy.
• Hollywood epitomizes everything it is to be American, to be a dream-seller and to create fantasies worth striving for. For good or for bad, movies have the power to not only create illusions but also create behavior changing aspirations. From smoking to product placement and army recruitment, the movies have been used time and again to influence behavior successfully.
• iPhone apparently is going to make Apple a reported measly 20% profit as they spent a reported $60 on the multi-touch screen alone. Apple knows better than anyone else, that to have great success you need to change everything and start from scratch. Don’t improve, innovate. I hate my Treo because of the experience I have each time I use it. Non-intuitive mess of menus and un-inspiring graphics make it is a piece of technology I will happily replace for something better. That is the distinction between a commodity (that everyone sells) and being a memorable experience that inspires and creates joy (that only a few can achieve). The iPod transformed the digital music scene and how people listen to their music. The iPhone may just do that to the mobile device industry.
• The category re-inventors. These are the companies that come in and change what people thought of that product category by creating an experience around it. Starbucks became the third place where people drank their java (home, office and the comfy sofa chairs at their local Starbucks). Whole Foods, Dean & Deluca. Both high-end grocery stores, both created an experience creates gourmands out of everyday joes (and spend much more for the same item they could have bought at their local Safeway). With Dean & Deluca’s marble floors, over-sized Grecian columns and array of exquisite brands, sampling stations and delicious smells wafting of their in-store restaurant, they don’t just sell groceries, they create a sensorial experience. Whole Foods in NY at the corner of Central Park and brings the park experience into their store by offering cute little “park picnics” of fresh bocconcini cheese and imported crackers. They leverage their location to create experiences around the products they sell. Buying their product helps transform me into a culinary literate.

The list could go on but you get the idea. Say what you will about America, about excessiveness and the desire for “more”. However, to me, Americans have taught the world what it is like to sell experiences for profit. Make the happiest place on earth at the cross section of highways in the middle of a dessert, create a culture by building a 4.2 million sq ft mall , create an iconic hero out of a chain smoking cowboy , manufacture the world’s largest selling sugary soft drink in the shape of a woman’s body . Suddenly, you are dreaming of a life that is not your own.

Most brands set out to sell product and that’s what they end up doing . However, brands that show another way of living, that provide a goal for a different life, are the ones leave indelible marks on society. They transform the market they are launched in and they leverage the beautiful cycle of educating their customer to know more and want more. They take the time to understand their audience but instead of just catering to them, they create aspirational goals that resonate with the desires of their core audience.

competitive advantage

1. We are curious. The best designers are those that bring knowledge to a project but gather perspective from the end-user. Designers are trained to know that they don’t know all the answers and the best solutions to problems lie in examining context and defining the target. To design for a better future, a designer must uncover how the people lead their lives today. Ask questions, uncover truths and dig to find out who they should be designing for.
2. We create brands. Don’t hire a designer who uses the words logos and brands interchangeably. Instead look for designers who think logos are only as important as lipstick on a beautiful woman. Creating a brand means adding true market value that transcends features or benefits.  I paraphrase and borrow liberally from the Brand Gap but the idea is that imagine Coke without it’s brand. It’s worth half it’s current market value:
3. We create distinction in crowded marketplaces. Clever design and niche products have made Apple successful again. Good design has always been the cornerstone of what Apple has been known for. Everyone knows that the soon to be available iPhone has nothing amazingly new about it. But we also know that Apple will make access to the features and the shear visuals so appealing that the iPhone will make other phones look like Stone Age tablets. Apple understands and leverages the fact that design is the ultimate competitive edge.
4. Designers are excellent translators. Got business goals? Got technological constraints? Designers can uncover user goals and then find the sweet spot where business goals and user goals converge. Even better, they can ensure that technology can be leveraged to meet those goals. Designers help business dream big and beyond what exists today and also ground those dreams by presenting a set of very real, tangible user goals. Sure you want to build a flying pig but no one wants one! Good design means building products and services that are useful. Less wasted time, less bad products.
5. Design = Innovation = Design. When Business Week wanted to launch a section on design their research told them that their readers assumed that the section would be all about architecture and interior design. So they renamed that section to be called Innovation. A sign of the times we live in. Design walks around wearing a veil called Innovation. Whatever you call it, you are dead in the waters without it. Design not keeps businesses alive, it helps them float to the top and be seen as victorious over their competition.
6. Design saves lives. My Treo’s tiny buttons have caused me to have many a close-call car accidents (I know, I know, no multi-tasking while driving). That said good design has probably saved my life many a time. From my steering wheel car stereo controls to the 3 point safety belt that keeps me from kissing my windshield. ABS brakes that don’t require me to do anything different than just use a brake like I always would. Designers dare to think different and when they do; they reward us with products that work. While your badly designed website may not kill people, it may contribute to Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (CTS) or just good ol’ web rage.
7. Designs are user advocates. If you ever have the pleasure to be in a feature discussion meeting, they start to sound like a religious debate . I would never…I always…My mother has said…My girlfriend swears she would never…People use whatever anecdotes they possibly can to prove their point of view and ‘win’ the debate. A ‘good’ designer would bring good research to the table. Research based on fact, research based on user goals to validate direction. Use your designer as your stand-in for the user you should be designing for, and trust that they are the voice of the people. That’s who they want to please. That’s who makes you money and keeps you in business.
8. Designers make things pretty. Human nature: “If it looks good, it must be good”. Test this: try using a black and white monitor again.
   We are highly visual creatures who make snap judgments on the basis of how things appear in that moment. This is how we survive, hunt and gather and marry people who will make use beautiful babies to carry forth our civilization. Designers understand this and use this knowledge to make us products that fit in with our idea of beauty. Beauty is not skin deep, it is the knife’s edge.
9. A design process is a good process. You don’t develop a brand, you design a brand. You don’t develop a software application, you design a software application. Having a user experience focused design approach means that the entire production cycle should have design validation at key points throughout the entire process. This keeps the focus where it should be. On the paying customer.
10. Designers love constraints. Tell a designer that they have complete freedom to do what they want, there is no target market and there are no financial or technical constraints. They go crazy. They literally go nuts. They become artists creating for themselves. Designers are defined by constraints and embrace them with open arms. After all, to design for a fixed target, to design for a set of rules and goals is what defines design. It’s what we do.

So I propose to you, get designers to rule the world and we will be happier, waste less by building products and services that we actually want to buy and use well. Fire your local self-serving politician, hire a designer and we will live in closer harmony with the planet which we happen to inhabit.

P. S. I apologise to my high-school English teacher. I realise that the title of my article is grammatically incorrect, but what can I say. It’s ambiguity was seductive!

It was a typical interaction design project, testing initial assumptions, validating business logic with a user-centric philosophy and asking simple questions like “why” and “how”.

However, looking back at the project and the path it has taken over the last few months, it has been anything but typical.

It is my pleasure to introduce you to Rouxbe.

Rouxbe helps people to cook simple recipes using video. Gone are the days of printing off complicated recipes and guessing what those fancy French words mean, and not being sure just how to get to that all important end-result. You can now have a chef walk you through the process without the camera attempting to make the chef the celebrity. Right now, you have subscriptions to magazines that show beautiful food. Now see how that food is made, and you control your viewing experience. No ads to skip through. Just lots of videos recipes. Amazingly shot and served. You don’t need to follow along. Just watch, learn and then go make.

Rouxbe was different for DesignStamp for a lot of reasons. Our commitment to Rouxbe is ongoing and our involvement is much more collaborative and immersive than the consultative role that we usually play. We have been involved in the building of Rouxbe, it’s online presence and technical development from ground up. From building the proprietary Flash player, to creating a complete website including e-commerce components, we are working with Rouxbe to take the user through a smooth, hassle-free experience. Nothing should come between the new user and the food recipes that they can sample.

One of the other key things that makes Rouxbe different is it’s commitment to a cause much higher than profit. To feed starving kids around the world. Having worked in the field for years, one can get a bit jaded and just about everyone you talk to has the next big Web 2.0 idea that they want to bring to market and get bought by Google. One of my first meetings with Joe Girard, the CEO of Rouxbe was not about the financial promise that Rouxbe held, but about Rouxbe for Life. A good cause that is whole heartedly supported and believed in by all of us that are working to build the Rouxbe brand. In fact, we all contribute money towards the cause each time we eat a meal together (working at Rouxbe means that there are a LOT of delicious meals before, after and during every meeting!)

In the next few months, I hope to be able to share details about our design process and the development of Rouxbe as a trusted brand. Till then, I invite you to try Rouxbe and give us your feedback. After all, the proof is in the pudding. Or more precisely, in the Crème Brulée!

We frequently work with companies that in the process of establishing, building or redefining their brand.

On the key exercises that I like to emphasize when building a brand from the ground up or focusing an existing brand is the importance of a brand voice.

Here’s how I see it.

Problem: We want to speak to our customer, but there are a lot of other voices that are screaming the same message to our customer. We have something unique to sell to our customer, but we are afraid that they will not be able to hear us over the din of our competitors.

1. Also called Step ZERO. Let’s forget about the competitors for a minute. You have obviously made it this far based on the assumption that you have a unique product or service offering. Or you were able to prove that there is enough room in the market for you. Hence you were able to raise the capital needed to be in existence. So, you and I both know that you have something to offer your customer. But what is it? Before we attempt to speak with “them”, let’s make sure we know WHAT we want to say to our target market. What makes our product/service worthy of their time and why should they care to keep us in business. How are we helping them?
2. Let’s talk about HOW we want to speak to them. What is our brand voice (that being the reason for this article). Country music or Country Grammar? When they exclaim “that’s hot”; do they mean the temperature of something is uncomfortably high, or do they mean that sh** is phat? Knowing your target audience’s brand voice, tells you the style and tone that your brand must have to be accessible to its market. Brand voice is not just a vocabulary; it is how successful brands clearly express their membership (or leadership) to their tribe. A brand’s voice communicates its values, principles and just who they are, to their market.

When a brand communicates clearly, it has a voice. And a brand with voice has power. Because then it can do a multitude of things and yet always find a way to communicate its brand message clearly in everything it does.

Brand voice must resonate with its target market to be successful.

Trying to fake your brand voice to make it accessible to its target audience is as offensive to your target audience as Ted Danson doing black face. Your brand shouldn’t just speak in the voice that you define, it must become it.

Defining a brand’s voice, means bringing a brand to life. Get rid of big brand standards documents that teach you how to use that logo. Instead think about making your brand into a real person. Think about who your brand is. Where do they hang out. What parties do they go to? Would you invite them over to your house? And if so, would your personal style, appeal to them or hurt their sensibilities? How will they sit at a party? In the middle of a young crowd or huddled with the small group of suits discussing the benefits of investing in tech stocks?

Knowing your brand voice means that you now know not only what you want to say, but how you want to say it.

Looking at a few 404 Error messages online, it becomes clear that even errors can speak volumes about a brand’s voice and how it communicates to it’s users.

Consider the following error messages: Basecamp, a project management tool, is both authoritative in its error messages and calm. Flickr is like your buddy, irreverent yet cool. Apple knows text lists will bore you while Windows is geekier. Google has the manner of a guy who has one piece of furniture in his one-room apartment which also houses 5 computers!

Marcus Graham takes the concept of brand voice one step further. He takes the concept of brand voice very literally. He researched 100 brand voices by recording the official automated phone greetings. So if you go to Top 100 voice brands you can actually compare what say Starbucks voice sounds like, to that of Microsoft, Apple or Charles Schwab. While I am not sure if every company has the budget to hire the best voice talent to record their company’s automated systems, the study speak to the importance NOT being seen as gruff, robotic and un-human. It’s more impactful to be personal, trust-worthy and human.

Finding your brand voice is making the definitive statement about who your brand is, and who it is not. And it is also proof that the brand really “gets” its target audience. That it doesn’t wait to speak to its market through focus groups and feedback forms. It also lives in the world that its target audience inhabits.

A brand with a clear voice manages to have enviable shorthand with its core market. Sometimes it leads the tribe, sometimes it is just one of the tribe, but whatever its position, it is identifiable, tangible and ultimately very human.

powered by performancing firefox

Most businesses rely on statistical data to learn about there customer aka user. Be it demographic info such as age, income, occupation etc. But we find that the richness of talking to the actual users and learning about their experiences cannot be found in the best drawn statistical chart. Statistical averages are useful for large scale projects such as deciding where a highway should be built, but a humanized approach works better when designing software or marketing collateral. We find that creating user profiles helps us remain objective in our process, validate our design decisions and intuitions about potential problem areas. This is an example of a user persona that helped us conduct a usability study on our client’s existing web service.

Besides those good old statistics about demographics of your user, try and get some empirical data about your target audience. Do you know about how and why your user buys your product? What is their current perception about you and where did they get this impression? How different is this impression from the marketing message you put out there? Here’s a brief checklist of items to find out about your user:

• Experience: How long have they know about you, and your products? How did they come in contact with your brand? What similar products do they use currently? This will teach you not only your competition but also about your users experience with your product domain.
• Relationship to you? What do they know about you? What do they NOT know about you? This will help shape marketing, and brand awareness initiatives. Good branding is about creating top of mind awareness. And if you haven’t got to that stage with your core audience yet, there may be some work ahead.
• Relationship to technology: An easy way to figure this one out is to really hear how people talk about technology (Phrases such as ‘That thingie to click on…’ speak volumes about your user’s comfort level and exposure to technology). Alpha geeks (those who adopt early and often) have different relationship to technology than laggards. And both may impact your bottom-line differently even if your product has little to do with cutting edge technology. After all there is no point creating a complex interactive flash movie about your product, if it’s controls will frustrate yourt users and take focus away from your product.
• Language: Pot-taah-toh or Put-tay-toe? Do they use the same words that you do to describe the end-product? If you work in the music industry for example, does your user think of their music as songs or tracks? Use the language that works for your user. If you are a b2b enterprise, what does that business call their target audience? Use that word (example: subscriber?) to refer to their customer
• Humanize your brand: Ask people that if your company were an actor which actor would it be? It’s probably better to be seen as a Brad Pitt than a Jack Nicholson if your company deals with cutting edge technology. Not good if your brand is seen as a Dame Judy Dench when your aim was to attract a young, energetic crowd.
• Drivers of purchase decisions: What is important to your user when it comes to your product domain? You may be surprised by the answers you get. You might think that people only care about price, but they actually base decisions on credibility. You might think that people look for deals, but turns out they just trust what their son, daughter, niece or nephew tells them to buy. Finding the decision drivers will help focus your energies in the right direction.

I could go on, but the idea is that we want to find ‘human information’ not numbers. Wisdom not data. No one has 2.24 kids and is of 30 to 40 years of age. Averages only get you so far. We think better design happens when we can imagine who it is, that we are designing for.

"When I design, I design for people, not for an abstract entity, a market, but for real people. People I know, people I love."
— Konstantin Grcic (European furniture designer)

According to a pioneer in the world of marketing, Louis Cheskin, we cannot help
but be influenced by the packaging of a product. To us, as consumers, when we
buy a product, we buy the packaging and the product. Coke from no-name can
will taste inferior to us than Coke in a Coca-Cola can. Cheskin called this
“sensation transference”. What we feel about the package of a product
can influence how we feel about the product itself.

Back in the 1940’s, Cheskin packaged margarine in a foil wrapper
and asked the manufacturer to change its color from the de facto white color to a rich yellow. By making
these changes, Cheskin managed to equate margarine to the aesthetic qualities
of butter (considered a superior product than margarine). Sales of margarine
went up dramatically.

So what can we learn from Cheskin’s principle of ’sensation transference’? That
it matters how we package things. We start to experience the taste of an Oreo
cookie even before we put the cookie in our mouth. From the color of the
outer package to the crackling of the plastic inside, the cookie is more
than flour and sugar and a few thousand chemicals. It is the sum total of the
entire experience, from the product display in the grocery store, the package
and it’s contents. And that is what good brands have always known. Countless people have
talked about helping Jacob Nielsen, usability professional, re-design his
website, to help him take advantage of this sensation transference. Good
content inside a good looking container, may be more palatable than the existing
pale yellow and blue laundry list of links.

So what we can learn from sensation transference today? Well, for one, let’s focus on how we package our brand. Let’s take a good hard look at
our brand package and figure out if any of the below is true for it:

1. Our logo is not as important as we think. Yes, you heard correctly. Your logo is really not
   that important. Once you have a professionally designed logo in your hands,
   it’s not the logo but what you do with it that matters. Unless you are a
   multi-national corporation that needs to be recognized across language and
   cultures, and are willing to spend millions of dollars to protect your
   properties, your logo is only one part of your visual language. You will want
   to spend equal amounts of time and money, to build your messaging and product
   statements. Can you guess which company’s website this is? You probably can,
   even though there is no mention of their products, and all evidence of their
   logo and navigation has been removed. The reason for that is that while this company recognizes that their logo is important, they are also equally concerned with all other aspects of their visual communication to you, the end-user. They ensure that their products, website and all marketing material speak the same language. (Oh, just in case, the company is Apple)
2. We are not consistent enough. To understand the importance of
   consistency, imagine a happy meal without a toy. Or a visit to Disneyland
   without seeing those mouse ears. Or the absence of Tony the Tiger on the
   Frosted Flakes cereal box. Packaging your brand means to have a shorthand with
   your audience. They need to know what you stand for. Today and tomorrow. Both
   physically and conceptually. Cool is to Apple what Speed is to Fedex. Or what
   discounts are to Wal-Mart. From your brochures to your office carpet, consider
   what your choices are saying about what your brand stands for.
3. We are not different enough. Might seem like a paradox when discussing
   consistency, but to be different is to not be like your competition. Pierre Bourdieu,
   a French psychologist said, “A choice of brand is a clear statement of
   what you are NOT!” Show your audience how you are different. What do you
   stand for, that your competition does not? To be a strong player in the market
   you need to be known for one thing. Make sure you shout out this difference
   from the roof tops (roof tops could equal home page, splash screen, brochures
   etc). Your difference can actually be a potential weakness turned upside down.
   For example: some people prefer dealing with small, growing companies rather
   than the big corporate man. Ben & Jerry’s capitalized on that. Maybe your
   difference is not in the final product but in your production process? Or in
   your values and community involvement? Vancity made a name for themselves doing
   just that. The only way you are going to find out what you do differently than
   your competition, is to study your competition and the existing marketplace—know
   them inside out and react with courage. “Against Animal Testing” was more than
   just a slogan, it was a way of doing business that brought the Body Shop much
   success and encouraged the entire cosmetics industry to examine their
   practices.

So in the end, to understand the importance of branding is to understand the power of packaging. We are human and can’t help but be influenced by what we see. So make sure that your outsides are telling the correct story about your insides!

Big ups to two books "Blink : The Power of Thinking Without Thinking" and "Brand Sense". Both are seemingly contradictory. The first places emphasis on how we can go wrong when asked to evaluate our first impressions, and the second bases research on asking people about their first impressions. However, both books helped me write this article.

What does trust mean in the world of branding, business relationships and customer satisfaction? Today let’s take on trust and brands.

Brands simplify our world by giving us experiences, tastes and sounds that we can rely upon. Psychologists call this anchoring. You know how that non-fat soy latte at Starbucks will taste no matter if you bought it in Langley BC or Manhattan NY. You take comfort in knowing that Enya always sings soothing celtic music and each CD is about the same in mood. You also know that if you get that report completed FedEx will pick up the package and deliver it to your client by the next day. Brands offer consistency. Consistency that you can trust.

Things fall apart when that trust is broken. You thought your shoe was about making you into a superstar athlete. Turns out that little children in a small dark rooms in Asia, made the shoe, for next to no money. You thought your computer just cared about where you wanted to go today, but instead it just wants to make you go through wizards and menus to get simple tasks done. Your coffee is cold and that latest Enya CD is giving you a headache. She’s doing hip-hop duets with Kanye West! Jim the FedEx courier does not look like the picture of speed and efficiency, standing there, leaning against the counter and flirting with your office assistant.

Brands are a relationship of trust. Trust that comes from consistency and delivering on promises that are made. So don’t expect the logo that we design to be the end all and be all of your branding exercise.

Here are 3 easy steps to ensure that you have a meaningful, trusting brand relationship with your customer:

Step 1: What is your promise?
If the customer can’t easily decipher what is it that you do, and why you do it, you’ve lost the game before it even started. Make your message clear, concise and meaningful. Skip the marketing hoopla (there’s plenty of time for that later), make sure that you have first established a clear Unique Selling Proposition(USP) in the mind of your customer.

Step2: Do you communicate it well?
Your promise to your customer must be used as the basis for all your communication collateral. From your logo, to your website, to the print brochures and business cards that you hand out at tradeshows, make sure that they all communicate the core promise that you are making to your customer. Communicate the promise through words, color palette, typography, visual language and most importantly through your employees. The most beautiful piece of marketing collateral falls apart, if your team doesn’t “buy it”. You can only make an honest promise to your customer if you have the buy-in internally. Everyone from the CEO to the IT geek need to believe in what you want to deliver. Yes, FedEx delivers on time, but how? Their face is the Jim the FedEx guy and how he carries himself, becomes directly linked to the FedEx promise.

Step3: Deliver what you promise
Amazon’s success is frequently attributed to the fact that it was one of the few dot coms that actually took the time to establish an offline shipping system that could deliver the tight shipping dates that it promised its online shoppers. On the other hand why did eBay spend big moola in buying Skype, a seemingly unrelated business, but has done little to innovate on their online experience to make the tasks of the buyer and seller easier. The Gap has always been king at ensuring that it’s store experiences are freakishly consistent, going so far as to provide accurate measurements of the angles at which mannequins arms must be displayed in store windows around the world.

So in short, make sure your customer has clear expectations on what is it that your brand promises and then go ahead and meet (or ideally, beat) those expectations.

Is your brand reliable? Consistent? Ergo Trustworthy.