Brand Quarterly May 2012 by Vesey Creative

Brand

™

Volume 1 | Issue 3

May 2012

Quarterly

Building Your Business From The Brand Up™

PDS: Your Brand’s GPS Your Brand’s Promise Delivery System

Facebook Timeline Big Changes That All Marketers Need To Know About Brand Rehab Changing The Way People See You Natural Selection Getting The Right Staff For Your Brand

Brand Quarterly™

In This Issue I-mitate Or I-nnovate: The Case For Change

Natural Selection Getting The Right Staff For Your Brand

…But It’s Just 10 Cents Are You Investing Your Resources Wisely?

PDS: Your Brand’s GPS Your Brand’s Promise Delivery System

Trade Promotion, Or Not? A Powerful Tool... If Used Correctly

Facebook Timeline Big Changes That All Marketers Need To Know About

Let’s Get Relevant Building A Profitable User Experience

Brand Rehab Changing The Way People See You

The Fab Four Finding Information to Give You the Edge

Hear Ye, Hear Ye... Please... Who Cares About What You Have To Say?

Give It To Us Straight Customer Satisfaction Surveys

Mars, Meet Venus When It Comes to Successful Networking, Everyone Wants to Get Along

Design 101 Utilising A Good Visual Hierarchy 2

Building Your Business From The Brand Up™

8 10 14 16 20 22 24 26 29 31 32 34 36

From The Editor Time Flies When You’re Having Fun A warm welcome to issue three of Brand Quarterly magazine. After a brief visit to Australia and Dubai, we have arrived in the United Kingdom and are looking forward to expanding our subscriber base here. As well as meeting potential contributors from this side of the world to add to our already amazing group of experts. Speaking of new contributors, we have two new experts contributing to this issue: Cathy Heath and Farrukh Mizar. We would like to thank them for sharing their expertise with all of our subscribers. If you would like to join our list of contributors, you can follow this link for more details: http://bit.ly/tUluqC Congratulations are also in order for the winner of our subscriber iPad competition: J Hughes of Jungle Gene Bengals. We hope you enjoy you new toy - opps, I mean valuable business tool. We hope you enjoy this issue and find the articles informative and most importantly, helpful. Should you think of a particular topic you would love to be covered in a future issue, please feel free to email us on studio@veseycreative.com

Fiona Vesey Vesey Creative

Enjoy! Fiona

Volume 1 | Issue 3 | May 2012 Brand Quarterly magazine www.brandquarterly.com Publisher/Design: Vesey Creative Ltd studio@veseycreative.com

As the publishers of Brand Quarterly, we take every care in the production of each issue. We are however, not liable for any editorial error, omission, mistake or typographical error. The views expressed by all contributors are not necessarily those of the publisher.

Copyright: This magazine and the content published within are subject to copyright held by the publisher, with individual articles remaining copyright to the named contributor. Express written permission of the publisher and contributor must be acquired for reproduction.

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Featured Contributors Lincoln Smith Sun Tzu said “All men can see these tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved.” This is also true for marketing. At 23, Lincoln had realized that there is a real need for businesses to change from the inside out. He started Lead Creation with the view to be an innovative and supportive marketing company that is expert at what it does, utilizing the culture and experience from people around the world. Now at the ripe age of 26, his company has grown to 30 staff, originating from 11 countries.

Andrew Healey Andrew Healey is the owner and operator of Word Works Copy writing Services. Before working as a copywriter, Andrew spent most of his career in the sales and marketing arena, and he brings this wealth of experience to his writing. “It’s all about communicating your message clearly and professionally”.

Stephen Giles Stephen Giles is a lawyer, strategic advisor, author and multiple brand owner who is generally acknowledged as the leader in his field in Asia Pacific. He heads the Retail & Brands Group in Asia Pacific for Norton Rose - a law firm with 39 offices throughout Asia, Australia, Canada, Europe, the Middle East and South Africa. He focuses on distribution strategy and structure, brand commercialisation, competition and consumer law and franchising, and his client base comprises many leading consumer and luxury brands. Stephen is also Chairman of the Franchise Council of Australia, and an advisory board member with leading brands Mrs Fields, Lenard’s, Pandora and Horseland.

Ken Vesey Ken is the director and lead consultant at Approachable Consultancy. Over the past 26 years, he has run several small business units, recruited staff, carried out management performance reviews, disciplinary meetings and exit interviews. He has written policy and procedures, created quality documents and systems, developed personnel systems, employment and contractor agreements and probably every other document you need for best business practice.

Building Your Business From The Brand Up™

Andrew Vesey As a co-founder of Vesey Creative and creator of Brand Quarterly, Andrew lives his passion everyday – helping people and companies to grow and be successful. He keeps himself busy, constantly learning more in his fields of interest and sharing that knowledge with others. Andrew brings to the table 15+ years of training and industry experience in the areas of Graphic Design, Marketing, Advertising, Branding, Photography and Web Design.

Farrukh Mizar Connector of people, brands and ideas, Farrukh is a sales and marketing professional with an MBA and over 12 years’ real world experience working with FMCG, Retail, Corporate and Fashion-Luxury brands. He is also the founder of Tynderbox: Igniting Your Innovation – a global initiative to drive innovation through schools and universities and bring products or services to the market within 12 months.

Dr. Ivan Misner Dr. Ivan Misner is the Founder & Chairman of BNI, the Senior Partner for the Referral Institute, an international referral training company, as well as a New York Times best-selling author. Called the “Father of Modern Networking,” by CNN, Dr. Misner is one of the world’s leading experts in business networking and referral marketing. As well as Brand Quarterly, Dr Misner also contributes monthly articles to Entrepreneur.com as the online magazine’s networking expert, and he is a featured blogger on BusinessNetworking.com.

Cathy Heath Cathy Heath, of Heath Research Services helps companies challenge assumptions and gut feelings by giving them strategic and tactical insight into competitive landscapes, market opportunities, industry trends, and customer needs. By using free and fee-based information and telephone research, Cathy’s clients then understand how they can get new business, monitor change, and protect their market share.

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Featured Contributors Fiona Vesey As a multi-award winning professional photographer, Fiona has a great eye for detail, which she brings to her role as editor at Brand Quarterly. Fiona is a co-founder of Vesey Creative and Brand Quarterly, and has a background in Advertising and Sales. This gives her a great working knowledge of Branding, with the added benefit of the perspective of being involved in the day-to-day running of a business.

Cath Vincent Cath Vincent is a motivational speaker and coach. She inspires people to create change in their lives for tangible business benefit and personal wellbeing. Drawing on techniques such as Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) and hypnosis, she can help you access the power of your unconscious mind and remove hidden obstacles holding you back. She runs a series of seminars called “Change Your Life in Your Lunchtime” and amongst her passions is coaching clients to overcome the fear of public speaking. She is active on the Leadership Team of her local BNI and a mentor for Business Mentors New Zealand.

Kerry Ensor Kerry is the founder of Auckland’s Social Media Mgr Ltd, focusing on guiding small business owners to connect to and engage with their customers. She does this through the use of relevant social media tools combined with conventional marketing to create an integrated communications strategy.

Keri Sandford Keri is a Design and Marketing Coordinator with Vesey Creative. With 12 years in sales, planning and coordination, she easily brings together numerous Branding components and varied personalities into a cohesive plan. In her regular column ‘Design 101’, Keri uses this experience to help everyday business people understand designers and the design process. Allowing for a more effective result from the design portion of your Brand.

Building Your Business From The Brand Up™

From The Web “It’s art if can’t be explained. It’s fashion if no one asks for an explanation. It’s design if it doesn’t need explanation.” Wouter Stokkel

The Domino’s Revival A great example of how listening to your harshest critics can help you to improve your business. Click the image to view via YouTube

Greg Selkoe On Social Media And The Verge Culture Find out how internet fashion label Karmaloop has managed to both outlast the dot-com bubble and make a mark in the ever-changing world of fashion. Click the image to view via Entrepreneur.com

8 Ways to Keep Creativity Fresh While Scaling A Start-Up The Young Entrepreneur Council asked eight successful young entrepreneurs to give their best tips for successfully scaling a start-up team, while still keeping the creative environment fresh. Here are their best answers. Click the image to view via Inc.com

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I-mitate Or I-nnovate: The Case For Change Ask any business owner and they will confess that they have spent more time working in the business than on the business. But business is not just about survival – it’s about moving forward. You can’t just sit back, serve your customers and count your takings. Whilst many businesses might describe the current economic climate as doom and gloom, there are others who cannot accept standing still as an option. So to move forward, you can either take the best of what is out there or try to innovate and come up with something truly original, truly new.

As A Business Owner, How Does One Prepare For This? You need to understand the market, see what your competition are doing, listen to what your customers want, anticipate where things are going and make changes to your business so that your offering is still relevant. Actually not just relevant but exciting and enticing! This is an opportunist market to re-define and re-design your products or services and reap the rewards of success. 8

Building Your Business From The Brand Up™

clever marketing and strategic design, V established a market for itself by being a local competitor to the global giant. It has paid well for V which is now owned by Danone-Frucor – a global food and beverage giant. With the resurgence of café culture, many local café franchisers have adopted the “Starbucks” approach with marginal differentiation to establish a niche within New Zealand. In the mobile app world, the recent sale of Instagram to Facebook for a reported $1.12 billion has spawned an army of clones that are hoping to sell off their business for one-tenth the price to a willing buyer.

Farrukh Mizar Tynderbox

What Does It Take To Innovate? For a start, a lot of research, thinking and planning on how to make things cheaper, easier and faster for people. Stop and sit back then think backwards, upwards, downwards, sideways and even outside the box – play with your business and your products or services. This process can take some time but it’s surprising what you can do relatively quickly and for relatively little investment.

Make Use Of Your Most Unique And Critical Asset – Your People Whilst many business owners make a commitment with resources and time, they ignore the most unique and critical asset – their people. You cannot do innovation alone. It’s better to do it with a small team to bounce ideas around, stretch yourself and be creative.

Innovation Versus Imitation There are some businesses that are looking to bring new ideas into the market not by innovation but my imitation. Imitation is relatively easy and fast, cheaper because you know what you’re going to try can be done. With little risks involved in implementation, there are strong rewards to be gained if done right. Imitation can be a valid strategy in some circumstance. Perhaps you’re positioning yourself as a regional competitor. You might be operating in a small country or small town, in this situation imitating and taking the best of Brand X or Brand Y to remain current and competitive is a valid strategy. That is until an innovator comes to operate in your market and then you’ll be a step behind and in trouble. In New Zealand, a classic example is that of Red Bull versus our very own V drink. Through the use of

Google and Facebook have this innovation process in place at the core of their business – they allow their teams to work on whatever they think will add value to the organization. Google has a full day a week (20% time) devoted to projects that will make Google better. It is through projects like these that Google Play and Google+ have been born.

Questions And Choices Coming back to the main point, we have to do what’s best to move the business forward. But, ask yourself first. Are you a follower or a leader? Are you in the business of copying or in the business of creating? Do you choose to co-exist or choose to establish a new existence? One path will lead to survival the other path could revolutionize your business. The choice is yours.

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Natural Selection Getting The Right Staff For Your Brand Any business preparing to hire employees should proceed with caution. It is costly to commit to an employee’s salary and benefits. Ask yourself this question. ‘Can we afford to have even one employee who is not working to full capacity?’ Ken Vesey Approachable Consultancy

Firing an employee can mean not only severance pay (and sometimes litigation), but also time and resources devoted to finding a replacement.

To help alleviate these problems, you need a systematic approach to recruitment and selection. Yes, they are two different systems. Recruitment is the stage of working out exactly what type of person you want and the requirements of the position or job they will undertake. Once you have decided on these two important aspects, the process requires attracting the right type of people to apply. Selection on the other hand is the process you go through to judge each applicant against your person and position criteria. So how does this connect to Branding? As I have said before, Branding is more than your logo. Your staff is the Brand that your clients see and deal with on a regular basis. Employ the wrong person, your instantly demote your Brand. Setting up a system is simple if you follow a few rules of thumb.

Is There Still A Position? The first question to ask yourself if you are replacing a position is ‘What did we learn from the person who filled the position before?’ You have a real opportunity now to correct all the mistakes you have lived with for some time. At the same time consider how you might improve the types tasks the position performs. Let us say you filled the position five years ago. Since then you have wanted to change it because the business now has a different focus or added aspect. You may have found it difficult to introduce change with the incumbent. Now you can change it as much as you want.

What Are The Job Specifications? Before you recruit, you need to be sure what duties and tasks you want the position to accomplish. You need to be very clear on • the purpose of the job • where the job fits into the organisation structure, • the main accountabilities and responsibilities • key tasks to be performed A Job Description Has Four Main Uses: 1. Organisation: it defines where the job is positioned in the organisation structure. Who reports to whom. 2. Recruitment: it provides essential information to potential recruits (and the recruiting team) so that they can determine the right kind of person to do the job 3. Legal: the job description forms an important part of the legally-binding contract of employment 4. Appraisal of performance: individual objectives can be set based on the job description The Main Contents Of A Job Description Are: • Job title: this indicates the role/function that the job plays within an organisation, and the level of job within that function • Reporting responsibilities: who is the immediate boss of the jobholder? • Direct reports: who reports directly TO the jobholder? • Main purpose: what is the purpose of this position within the business? • Main tasks and accountabilities: description of the main activities to be undertaken and what the job holder is expected to achieve • Employment conditions: are there specific conditions such as Health and Safety, requirement for travel.

Another consideration at this time is – do we need this position? Could the work be redistributed amongst other staff? Could we out source some of the work? Is it really a fulltime position? Would it be better to employ a younger or more mature person to carry out the duties?

Building Your Business From The Brand Up™

What Are The Person Specifications? A person specification describes the requirements a jobholder needs to be able to perform the job satisfactorily. A person specification forms the basis for the selection of the most suitable person to fill the job. Person specifications have to be prepared and used with great care. In particular, it is important to ensure that the list of essential or desired competencies does not lead to unlawful discrimination against potential employees. Think of the essential competencies as your bottom line. I will not employee someone with less than this. Desired competencies on the other hand can be viewed as, if I employed the best person in the world, what would I want to see. When selecting you do not go below your essential line but rather try to reach your desired level of competency. To create a person specification, the most common approach is to use what are known as “competencies” to design the person specification. These are then classified as “essential” or “desired” to determine which are most important.

Competencies might include some or all of the following: • Education and qualifications – (e.g. Academic, Trade, Industry) • Experience - (e.g. relevant market experience, ability to supervise/manage, computer skills) • Personal attributes/qualities – (e.g. relationship building, integrity, customer service) • Physical attributes - (e.g. state of health, speech, fitness) • Aptitudes - (e.g. verbal reasoning; numerical aptitude) • Interests - (social activities; sporting activities) • Personal circumstances - (e.g. ability to work shifts; full or part time) • Communication – (e.g. spoken written, report writing, active listening) The Position Description and the Person Specification documents are your two most important documents in the process. If these are completed correctly, the rest of the process just flows.

The Recruitment Process

Stage One

Job Description

Define Requirements

Job Specification

Stage Two Attract Potential Employees

Job Advertising

Stage Three

Job Interview

Select The Right People

Ability Tests

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Advertising The Job The Objective of Recruitment Advertising is to simply attract suitable candidates, and deter unsuitable candidates. Whilst there are no hard and fast rules about the contents of a job advert, the following features are likely to be in an effective advertisement: • Accurate - describes the job and its requirements accurately • Short - not too long-winded; covers just the important ground • Honest - does not make claims about the job or the business that will later prove false to applicants • Positive - gives the potential applicant a positive feel about joining the business • Relevant - provides details that prospective applicants need to know at the application stage (e.g. is shift-working required; are there any qualifications required) Most Job Adverts Contain: 1. Details of the business/organisation (name, brand, location, type of business) 2. Outline details of the job (title, main duties) 3. Conditions (special factors affecting the job) 4. Experience / qualifications required (e.g. minimum qualifications, amount of experience) 5. Rewards (financial and non-financial) 6. Application process (how should applicants apply, how to; deadlines) There is always debate about advertising the financial rewards. Competitors. This is a business decision.

What kind of advertising medium should be chosen? My best advice is whatever media will reach the types of people you are looking for, and then use that. Always track the responses received from each media used for future use. There is no rule!!

Screening Applicants The screening process begins with an analysis of application materials submitted by applicants in response to the advertisement. Prior to reviewing resumes or curricula vitae, we must determine the criteria we will use to screen applicants. This is based on the Job Description and the Person Specification. The search is to select candidates for interview who meet all minimum requirements and are most qualified to fill the vacancy based on the stated requisites and desirable competencies. This will become your short list

Recruitment Interviews An interview is the most common form of selection and it serves a very useful purpose for both employer and job candidate: For The Employer: • Exploring information that cannot be obtained on paper from a CV or application form • Conversational ability- often known as people skills • Natural enthusiasm or manner of applicant • See how applicant reacts under pressure • Queries or extra details missing from CV or application form For The Candidate • Whether the job or business is right for them • What the culture of the company is like • Exact details of job

With the application, it is always great to have people reply depending on the focus of the job. I know it is common practice if the position requires contact with customer, either on the phone or faceto-face, to word the advertisement in such a way they need to telephone one person to receive the application pack. Here is your first interview! The contact person makes notes on each person who calls and this is used in the screening process.

There are also other forms of selection tests that can be used in addition to an interview to help select the best applicant. The basic interview can be unreliable as applicants can perform well at interview but not have the qualities or skills needed for the job.

Where the applicant is required to produce written work (reports, letters, emails), another technique is to ask for a ‘handwritten’ letter to accompany the application. This can tell you two things. Those who send you a type written letter obviously cannot follow simple direction. The construction of the letter, grammar, spelling and words used also give you an indication of the level of literacy. Sneaky, but effective!

Other selection tests can increase the chances of choosing the best applicant and so minimise the high costs of recruiting the wrong people. The most important type of selection rest you can use is the workplace based test. If there is requirement for a data entry speed of 100 words a minute, the easiest way to test that is give them a times exercise. Can they use the machines they say they do? So what if they have a ‘ticket’ to use a machine. Can they?

Building Your Business From The Brand Up™

Other less important examples in my opinion are aptitude tests, intelligence tests and psychometric tests (to reveal the personality of a candidate) and the most important. These may be important further up the ladder.

Making A Job Offer To The Successful Candidate The final stage of the recruitment process involves choosing the successful candidate. Once you have made your choice, you need to inform them. You can do this by sending an offer letter that should set out the main terms and conditions of the job or you may firstly wish to make them a job offer by telephone. This can help you quickly establish if the individual wants to accept the post. If that is the case, you can go on to discuss any terms of employment that need to be agreed upon - e.g. their salary, wages and benefits. You should bear in mind that an offer letter can form part of an employee’s contract of employment. However, if it does, you can still give them additional or completely new terms and conditions of employment at a later date. If necessary, you can state that some - or all - of these new terms replace some - or all - of the ones set out in previous correspondence. You must also give new employees a written statement of their main terms and conditions of employment. It should also state whether the offer

is conditional, i.e. subject to the outcome of checks such as educational qualifications or references, or unconditional, i.e. not subject to any further checks. If the individual accepts an unconditional offer, a contract of employment exists between you. Once the employee starts working for you, you have a duty of care towards them. This includes making sure they can do the job both safely and competently. The best way to ensure this is through a structured induction programme. Typically, in New Zealand a process may go as follows: 1. Make the offer verbally. Gauge the response. Establish a possible start date 2. If you have not completed all the checks, make the offer ‘subject to these being completed’ 3. The candidate would then: a. Accept the verbal offer ‘subject to seeing the Employment Contract’ - OR b. Want to negotiate the package until both parties reach an agreement. 4. Draft an Individual Employment Agreement, email to candidate so they are able to review using ‘fair and reasonable’ time and seek advice. 5. Discuss any questions or queries. 6. Prepare a final copy with all changes noted and the agreed start date for the candidate – mail/courier/invite the candidate into sign. BQ

They look the same. Make sure you know what makes them different

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Building Your Business From The Brand Upâ&#x201E;˘

…But It’s Just 10 Cents Are You Investing Your Resources Wisely? Here’s a little story about Warren Buffet, currently ranked the 3rd richest man in the world: Buffet was walking along with the Editor of the New York Times when he stopped to make a call at a pay phone. Drawing a 50c piece out of a pocket, he asked whether his companion had any change. His companion looked puzzled since the minimum call charge was 40c – after all, the change would only be 10 cents, surely it was hardly worth worrying about? But Buffet persisted “have you any idea of the compound interest on 10 cents over 25 years??” Buffet’s argument was that even something as small as 10 cents, when invested over time, would accrue and grow exponentially. And since Buffet’s fortune is estimated at US $45 billion, it seems to me, he might be a man worth listening too. That he has also pledged 99% of his fortune to charity only adds to the sense that he invests wisely and spends wisely too.

Cath Vincent

So what can we learn from this? The question is, in your life or business, are you wisely investing your resources? Or are you squandering them with a careless shrug, “hey it’s only 10 cents, or 10 minutes, or 10 miles”? Here are a couple of examples of the compounding effect to get you thinking – in these examples the precious resource is time.

Where Did The Time Go?

A Return On Investment

I recently advertised a role on a job website and was excited when the first applicant applied so I stopped what I was working on and checked out his CV.

Conversely, I bought a pilates DVD and was intrigued that the sessions were just 15 minutes. However, thinking I knew better and with the fervour that accompanies all new exercise programmes, I insisted on doing an hour. And that was my sum total - just one hour… before realising I couldn’t consistently fit it into my schedule. I stuck the DVD back on the shelf. So in short, I invested nothing, and gained nothing (well actually the DVD cost me 20 bucks).

It only cost me 10 minutes. (Oh, and some lost productivity incurred by stopping and what I had been doing.) Then another CV arrived so I “invested” another 10 minutes… but on seeing this candidate had uploaded a portfolio, I returned to the first to see whether he had too… then I found myself exploring some of the other features of the jobsite… This continued until I had 18 applicants. Even if I only spent 10 minutes on each one, that’s an investment of 3 hours and a lot of work interrupted. (And of course I didn’t just invest 10 minutes on each one… how easily side-tracked we are! Those job sites have salary comparisons too you know!) And what could I have done with 3 hours that had become neglected instead? What is the last thing on your to do list that somehow never gets done? Maybe it’s leisure time for yourself.

Finally I saw sense, and blew the dust off the DVD once more. This time I started doing 15 minutes every weekday as recommended, which could easily be fitted into my work schedule. Truly, I hardly noticed that small pocket of time. With the compounding effecting working in your favour, that 15 minutes adds up to 60 hours over the course of a working year – that’s 60 hours younger, fitter and stronger I have become. And because exercising becomes easier and easier, the benefit from each session becomes greater, not to mention the knock-on benefits of reduced stress, greater clarity and so on. That, my friends, is the power of compounding.

Here’s A Practical Tip To Take Away The resource that people are most short of, yet somehow value the least is their time. My advice would be to really examine the seemingly inconsequential pockets of time that get squandered in your life every day. Even if you only find 15 minutes you didn’t have before, that would help, right? BQ

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PDS: Your Brand’s GPS Your Brand’s Promise Delivery System With every promise you make as part of your brand, you need to deliver - It’s that simple. Ensuring you always deliver isn’t quite as simple. What you need is a Promise Delivery System (or PDS for short).

It is also important to note that this is NOT what most people consider a ‘Brand Manual’. A ‘Brand Manual’, as it is commonly known, is actually a ‘Visual Identity Manual’. It is all about presentation not delivery, and we want to focus on delivery.

Your Promise Delivery System is part of your overall operations manual (hopefully you have one of these). It can be a separate document delving more in-depth into the aspects of operation that directly affect your brand promise delivery, or it may be included in your operations manual, in-line or as sidebars or appendices.

I recommend using the two closely together to ensure a cohesive brand image, as how it is presented is an important part of your promise, as I will discuss later.

The key to remember here is that your operations manual has a wider focus on all aspects of business success, while the PDS allows for a concise explanation of how you will follow through with your brand promise.

Like any set of directions, you need to know where you are going first. So, make sure you are clear on what you are promising and exactly how those promises should manifest in your customers world.

So, Let’s Get Started... ...At The End.

Building Your Business From The Brand Up™

anything has been missed, or if you have started part-way into it - many people start on building the product and then realise they need to acquire the parts first, a major influence for quality, cost and speed. Go over this a few times and show it to other people involved in the process. Get their feedback on the basic steps only, don’t get caught up with the details just yet.

Now, Start Fleshing Out The Skeleton. I like to pick the points I consider the most important and focus on those first as they will influence the rest of the process. This is also a great opportunity to copy the exact procedures from your operations manual. With each step, it is extremely beneficial to explain to the reader ‘why’ the current step is important. It doesn’t need to be a novel for each step, some thing as simple as “This will ensure the customer receives their food at the correct temperature”. When people understand, they ‘buy in’ easier - they remember and follow the procedures correctly.

Andrew Vesey Vesey Creative

You want to be as detailed as you can at this point. The more detailed the better.

If your promise revolves around quality, then focusing on cost reduction and speed aren’t the best options. If it’s flavour, then focus on that. Some companies have a simple promise (delivered in under 30 mins), while others have a main promise with multiple, smaller promises that tie into it. Whichever scenario you are in, your PDS should cover delivery of all promises - focus on how to deliver everything you have promised. Once you know where you need to go, it’s time to plot your course.

First Up We Set Up A Skeleton Process. Quite simply, each stage of the process is noted, nothing more. This makes it easy to review the overall process with all the fiddly details and see if

“ Answer the telephone in a friendly tone, within 5 rings, using the greeting ‘Thank you for calling xyz bags’ ” is much better than “ Answer the telephone quickly with a friendly tone ”. it gives more direction and leaves much less to interpretation. After all, you know exactly what you want to happen - Interpretation is the enemy. We’re not trying to be the big mean boss, so keep that in mind with the tone of the document, but make sure it is clear that ‘This is the way we do things’. Always encourage recommendations on how to improve your processes, you can always update your PDS. But until it is updated, this is how it is done. This is when you can really integrate your PDS with your visual identity manual. Your image will affect whether your promise is believable and how you present yourself can make the difference between delivering on your promises or falling short. If you need a certain box used, then reference which design from the identity manual is required.

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The previous telephone example highlights one area often overlooked - The verbal presentation of your brand and brand promise. It’s not visual identity and not overtly connected to your promise delivery (unless of course your promise relates directly to how you greet customers). Make sure you pay attention to this area and give clear instructions. You don’t necessarily need to give scripts to read from, but at the least, you should explain tone and preferred words or phrases that solidify your brand image. We now have the major points on the delivery map. These have been joined together by the details of each step. So , you should easily be able to get from A to Z. Of course you can - but can someone else?

It’s Time To Bring In An ‘Out Of Towner’. Bring someone in that has no knowledge of your processes and hand them the PDS document, sit back and watch them go. Can they make it through to promise delivery? You may have specialist equipment or processes they are not trained to use, but giving them a pass for those, is your PDS simple enough to understand for a lay-person? If they can’t handle it, how can you expect your staff to? On the flip side of the coin, a fresh set of eyes may see solutions that enable you to streamline and improve your processes.

The final step in designing the system is to produce an introduction. A short, simple explanation of what you are trying to achieve, how it will benefit the customer, the company and the staff, and most importantly, why it is important. Staff will follow instructions much more readily if they believe in your reason why.

Once Complete, It’s Time To Implement. Now, if this is an existing product or service, you may already have a system in place. If this is the case, you need to educate the people involved about the improvements and alterations to the system to ensure your PDS is a success. If it is a completely new product or service, or a complete overhaul of a current system, then full training is the order of the day. You don’t need to spend a lot of money on professional educators to implement your system, but you don’t want to leave it in your staffs hands to educate themselves. Find that balance between self-education and interactive learning. Once they understand, they will remember.

So, with your PDS in hand, to bridge the gap between your operations manual and visual identity manual, you can now rest assured that your brand promise will correctly and consistently be delivered to the marketplace. BQ

Building Your Business From The Brand Up™

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VESEY CREATIVE LIMITED presents in association with BRAND QUARTERLY a VESEY CREATIVE production ‘THE BIG REVEAL’ starring YOUR BRAND and OUR TEAM offering BRAND ESTABLISHMENT, BRAND REVIEW, BRAND MANAGEMENT, BRAND IMPLEMENTATION and BRAND DEVELOPMENT based on YOUR COMPANY VISION supported by a VISUAL IDENTITY MANUAL plus Graphic DESIGN, PRINT MANAGEMENT, WEB DEVELOPMENT and MARKETINg consultancy in conjunction with Strategy, tRADE SHOW DEVELOPMENT, SOCIAL MEDIA, PHOTOGRAPHY and COPY WRITING produced by FIONA VESEY directed by ANDREW VESEY

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Beware: Your big promotion may not turn out the way you thought 20

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Trade Promotion, Or Not? A Powerful Tool... If Used Correctly Running trade promotions can be a powerful marketing technique and can engender customer loyalty. But are you running yours the right way? Different rules apply in the different states and territories and you need to be particularly mindful when you are running national promotions. You should ensure that you have the requisite permits and comply with the relevant rules. You also need to make sure that all critical aspects of the promotion are clear and understandable.

Stephen Giles Norton Rose

The Federal Court recently handed down an appeal decision about an “instant lottery” ticket. While slightly different from the usual trade promotions run by business, the case highlights the importance of getting your trade promotions right and the inherent risks. In the case, a woman bought an instant lottery ticket as a gift for her husband. The ticket gave him a chance to win a prize based on the game “pictionary”. To play, the instructions provided that he had to scratch off a panel to reveal a word and another panel to reveal an image. If the word matched the image then he would win the prize shown for that game. In this instance the prize was $100,000. The man scratched the word “BATHE” and then an image of a person swimming. Under the image was the word “SWIM”. The couple considered that because the word BATHE matched the image of a swimmer that they were entitled to the $100,000 prize shown. When they presented the ticket to collect their winnings they were told that it was “not a winning ticket”. The couple sued for (among other things) the $100,000. The court considered a contractual claim, breaches of the (then) Trade Practices Act (now Competition and Consumer Act) and a constitutional claim in determining the matter. We do not deal with the contractual claim or the constitutional claim. The original trial judge had found in favour of the couple for the Trade Practices Act claims. The trial judge found that the promoter’s conduct was misleading because it concealed, on the face of the ticket, critical information about a qualification and the word having to match the image and the word below the image. The trial judge found that this would have been easy to do and that: 1. The ticket should have included words to the effect of “Your ticket also contains, as a security measure, the confidential verification code for this prize”. 2. The game instructions could simply have referred to “picture and caption”.

The appeal court agreed, stating that the primary judge’s decision amounted to a finding that an ordinary and reasonable member of the class of consumers to whom the writing on the ticket was addressed, would have understood it to convey the same meaning as it conveyed to the couple - which was the right test at law. The promoter was ordered to pay damages of $20,000. In accepting that this was an appropriate award of damages by the primary judge, the Court noted that the assessment of damages for “disappointment and injury to feelings” is not a precise science. The Court also took into account the fact that the ‘sales pitch’ of Lotteries was directed to inducing consumers to believe that with a stroke of luck, they could experience the very elation which the couple had felt when they believed that their ticket was a winning ticket. This case is significant in that it is one of the few cases where a court has been called to apply its broad remedial powers under the TPA to non-commercial matters. This case highlights the importance of carefully planning and implementing your trade promotions. Businesses that use competitions as promotional tools, need to ensure that the rules are clear and concise and that all critical information is conveyed on relevant material (such as tickets or entry forms). Importantly, the mere reliance on underlying regulations (which are not commonly known to consumers) may not provide adequate protection if the accompanying promotional statements are particularly strong. A failure to properly disclose limitations and restrictions on the promotion can be a costly exercise and may lead to the costs of compensatory and corrective action that significantly outweigh the promotional benefit obtained from the promotion. BQ

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Facebook Timeline Big Changes That All Marketers Need To Know About Recently the landscape of Facebook has changed for Business. The introduction of the Timeline for Pages was not unexpected but the extent of the changes has surprised some. As with everything on the ever-changing landscape of social media, we will soon adjust and forget the old ‘Wall’ and the new ‘Timeline’ format will become second nature. By introducing this new style for business pages, Facebook have done the equivalent of turning a diary into an online magazine with columns and features – all providing great opportunities for branding and storytelling. If you wish to update your Page yourself, there are a lot of how-to articles available including a nice overview pdf from Facebook (view here). But as with any social media platform the ‘set-up’ is always the easy part, it’s making the page work for your business that takes more time and effort.

So What Do These Changes Mean For All The Marketers Out There? Broadly speaking Facebook now offers more diverse ways to enhance an authentic brand experience away from a base level of direct promotions and brand messaging. True to the core values of Facebook, this ‘magazine’ format is designed to present engaging content and story-telling. This reflects the interests of the consumer – essentially people are not on Facebook to be sold to. They are there to engage with ideas and areas of interest and to interact socially – a great opportunity for any business that wants to differentiate themselves by sharing their brand personality and adding value to customer service. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, content is always king. Changing our thinking from the traditional ‘push’ marketing – delivering oneway sales messages to customers – to supplying information, which adds value and creates a relationship of trust with your customers, is the new approach, commonly termed ‘pull‘ marketing. These Facebook changes underline this change in marketing approach. Businesses need to move with the times if they wish to communicate with their customer base effectively and be noticed on social media platforms.

Increased Visual Branding Opportunity – How Your Page Looks With the help of a graphic designer and good imagery the new Cover picture, likened to a website banner, gives a company great branding space. Working within the FB restrictions you can represent your brand here, with a simple logo, web banner or clever use of graphical elements and imagery of your branding. This slideshow on mashable.com shows some great examples for inspiration. If you have existing imagery you just need to ensure that it works in a horizontal banner format (851 x 315 pixels). For some businesses this will not be easy – if you just have square images or photos, plain logos, especially if they are in low resolution, you may find that you would better to get some graphic design input. However, if you have patterns as imagery this may be effective on its own, or with the addition of some wording. With the old style Facebook your branding space was a welcome page and a side-bar avatar and you had free range of ‘advertising space’ to show and say what you liked there. Whilst this new style is great opportunity for branding, there are some restrictions to consider (note: these are new): 1. No website address or contact information 2. No call to action, like Buy Now 3. No reference to the words Like or Follow, so no ‘Like our Page’ 4. No reference to price offers The Thumbnail avatar is the second piece of visual branding. We can get all very creative and excited about our Cover Pic, but it’s worth remembering that this little 32 x 32 px thumbnail remains the image that people will see most often. So it’s important to ensure that this picture represents your brand and is highly recognisable because it represents your ongoing opportunity to create brand awareness. A simple logo or a product picture or a photo of yourself (if you are your company’s brand) would be most suitable here.

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A less obvious branding opportunity is the potential to customize the navigation tabs. The links to your Photos and other Apps (formerly sitting on the left hand sidebar of your Page) are now displayed as navigation buttons just below your Cover Pic. When you first change to Timeline there will be default images inserted here.

Kerry Ensor Social Media Mgr

You can change the order of these buttons and use any appropriate visual or call to action here that best promotes your brand. The process behind changing these images – while not difficult – is not very user-friendly. It’s worth noting that the Photos tab cannot be moved and the image cannot be fixed. I’ve tried many ways to do this but ultimately what appears as this image will be the latest photo uploaded to the Page. If you have a 3rd party App installed for a Welcome Page or a custom written one, it will no longer work as a ‘landing’ page. This means that when a fan visits your Page they will always default to your Timeline not your welcome page. They can still click on the Welcome tab if they want to, but in all reality very few will actually do this unless you give people a reason to click to do so. BQ The new Facebook Timeline and how to update it

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Let’s Get Relevant Building A Profitable User Experience Your online messaging has to appeal to your visitors and make them an offering, but that process doesn’t start on your website. It begins with the whole user experience. Let’s start by asking, why Google is the most popular search engine? Back in the ‘90s when Yahoo and Google became popular as search engines, they actually went into one of the largest corporate battles of all time, fighting for consumers to use their services. Why did Google win? Well, Yahoo all of a sudden decided to make money out of their business by creating revenue from results they gave to their end users. To Yahoo’s own expense, they placed paid search results inside the organic results and did not tell the consumers that these ads were actually there. You all know how you feel when you receive a piece of unsolicited mail – trust just goes right out the door. So when you receive a result that is not relevant to your logical search, it’s exactly the same. Consumers did not find what they were looking for on Yahoo. Those people then turned to Google, and it has been the number 1 search engine since.

Lincolin Smith Lead Creation

So, understandably, when optimizing a website, we need to understand that we should first of all be providing the most relevant result to what people are searching for.

Optimization actually starts with logic. You have a website that has a purpose. You need to make clear that purpose and deliver this to the visitors in one solid path. Google – page – call to action/offer – sales process. They all need similar messaging to convert the sale. So, if you’re looking at optimizing a website or having a Google AdWords campaign or even

creating a solid sales message in a brochure, then it actually starts with logic and starts with understanding the way that people think. So how do you apply this to optimizing a website? Search engines have bias for text (it’s all they can read). And search engines give different weight to certain things on a website. There are certain things that are more technical, such as server-side coding and the way the compression works in a server but the lowest hanging fruit of website optimization is to be putting keywords (the terms that people are searching for) into various fields on your website that your users pay attention to. You should be putting your keywords in the large headings that appear on a page, titles that appear in the Google search results, descriptions that appear in the Google search results, your URLs, links to your website, and the actual anchor text (the blue text that appears as links on your site), as well as putting keywords in your body text. And why do you think that Google actually adds weight to all of those various things? If a user does a search in Google, then they want to see that search term in the search results (it’s what they’re looking for!). When they click through to a page, they want to see their search term on that page. Google then monitors the users response as well. Things like users staying on the site, going to another page, reading, etc. Google therefore knows automatically whether they are receiving something relevant or not. It’s their business to deliver the most relevant results. Be aware that other people are competing with you on search engines. So, that means that you need to do all the things that you possibly can in order to make sure that you’re competing against your competitors. Give search engines something to work with – relevant information. BQ

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Brand Rehab Changing The Way People See You When it comes to branding, image really is everything. No matter how good your product, how quick your service or how environmentally friendly your company, if your target market doesn’t see it that way you are in trouble.

Andrew Vesey Vesey Creative

There are many reasons why you may be looking at revamping your brand, but for the purpose of this exercise, I’ll stick with what I consider rehab - bad press, poor customer survey results, rapidly dropping sales. Other reasons would get filed under refreshing or rebranding, which focuses on building your brand from its base compared to turning around a negative trend.

So, How Do We Do This? The first step is to work out exactly what went wrong. The more detail you can get the better. What are your customers complaining about and what area of the business is it relating to? The use of surveys, focus groups and social media research (unsolicited comments posted on a Facebook page can be very informative - they’ll say what they really think.) How widespread is the issue? Does it seem to focus on one store in a chain of 50 or is it a company wide service problem? How widespread is the knowledge of the issue? Is everyone talking about it? Is it spreading virally? Has it hit the news? Is the issue relating to your brand promise or is there another area that customers believe is more important than you did? Once you have a handle on all of this important information, it’s time to do something about it.

The Next Step Is To Fix The Problem. This sounds simple enough, but so many companies do it wrong. Masking it with clever branding and marketing will only do so much. Once people know there is a problem, you will always be guilty until proven innocent. You’re also not just trying to plug a leak in your boat, you’re trying to stop the leak, make sure it never happens again and ensure the boat can handle much rougher seas before there is any threat of another leak. You don’t want to improve from ‘pitiful’ to ‘average’, you want to reach ‘great’. You already know what the issue is, so work out how to fix it.

If it’s simply one person making mistakes, retrain them or replace them, AND, create a system to ensure the right people are in the right positions and know what they should be doing. If it turns out some of your suppliers are burning down rain forests, then finding new suppliers that don’t AND give back to rain forests or other environmental causes is the solution. If it’s more complicated or your entire product, then the solution may be extreme. Take Domino’s Pizza as an example. After extremely poor feedback about their products from focus groups, Domino’s completely redesigned their pizzas - the bases, the sauce, the cheese, everything. A majority of complaints were about their bases - they turned around and made better bases AND better toppings.

At This Point, Review How This Solution Affects Your Entire Brand. • Was the issue with something outside of your brand promise? • If so, do you need to look at amending or completely changing your promise? • If you have altered your brand promise, then how does that affect your brand messaging? • Is it so drastic that a new logo or full visual identity is in order? • Do you need to rephrase your tagline to work with your new promise? • Does your current visual and brand identity still fit as long as you change the physical message going out? • Do you need to change your channels of branding and marketing or are they still appropriate?

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Let The World Know. Once you have fixed the problem and adjusted your brand accordingly, it’s time to tell everyone about it. Because, until you do, the perception will remain the same - Bad. You already know what you need to say - the key is to work out the best way to say it. Stepping back to Domino’s for a moment. They turned there image around by announcing to the world with paid and viral advertising, admitting their customers were dissatisfied with their products and let us know what they have done to improve them - and it worked. Domino’s has had a resurgence since their rehab session. Now, that won’t work for everyone but it’s an option that is proven to have worked. You need to work with all the data you have and come to a solution that is appropriate to you. If it was an issue that was not well known, then a simple “New And Improved Formula” style promotion may work. Possibly partnering with the appropriate charity would be effective or simply letting people know that a certain store is under new management and offer incentives to come back and try the service again. There are many choices and you really do need to find the right one that applies to your situation. There are also financial constraints to consider, but you need to get your message out there as quickly and clearly as possible with whatever resources you have. Social media, press releases, paid advertising and sponsorship (if in the budget) along with company websites and literature should all be leveraged.

Once you have launched your new, improved image, there are two more important steps that many companies forget about:

Deliver On Your Promises And Marketing Speak. Like I said earlier, no matter how cleaver your branding and marketing - If you don’t deliver, you will eventually fall flat on your face.

Make Sure Your New Brand Vision Is Working With Your Target Market. Your new branding is great, your new service is great, but are they great for your target market? Get feedback. Give yourself a short time to let things take affect, then go through the same process you did at the start to deduce the problem. What results do you get now?

One Last Piece Of Advice. A pre-emptive strike is always the best option. Do what you can to be vigilant. Regularly get customer feedback and know what goes on throughout your brand. The sooner you can spot a problem, the faster you can fix it. Some of the biggest revenue producing products and services have come from issues being addressed and improvement being made before we ever knew about them. BQ

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The Fab Four Finding Information To Give You The Edge Everyone’s looking for that competitive edge - that piece of information, or pattern of trends that gives them clues as to what to do next, and how they can use it to their advantage. Hopefully, this column will help give you the edge in your work, introducing you to new interpretations or giving you information to back up your gutfeeling on an idea.

Cathy Heath Heath Research Services

Alltop is one of my favourite aggregators. They bring together a range of sources such as websites and blogs, and then arrange the latest stories by subject on one page. Here’s their branding page, that covers the latest news from Adweek to Branding Strategy Insider. There’s lots of topics aggregated by Alltop, and it’s an easy way to keep-up-to-date with what’s happening. ClickZ provides news on marketing, covering topics such as social media campaigns, and mobile and online marketing tips. There’s lots to read on branding, including case studies on innovative campaigns run by well-known corporates. Some of these topics describe when things went well, others not so, and what to do better next time, which is always good to know! Not many people know about nzresearch.org. nz, our very own database of research papers. Generally, the database contains student dissertations on every topic imaginable. There are over 200 dissertations concerning branding, many of which can be downloaded. These are not exactly bedtime reading, but I found information on the challenges of translating brand names to Chinese to clarifying the value of manufacturer’s brands versus private brands to retailers. The Food and Beverage Information Project pulls together NZ market research on a wide variety of food and beverage sectors such as seafood, dairy and processed foods. The intention is to regularly update the information on each sector, and you can arrange to be alerted when new reports will appear. Lots of graphics are used to illustrate trends, and the information given is a good starting point to understand how the various sectors work. BQ

Keep up to date with your customers changing needs

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Have Your Say...

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• Got some feedback for us on this issue? • Would you like to see a new feature? • Any article you’d love to see? • Have a question you’d like answered? Email us today and have your say: studio@veseycreative.co.nz

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Hear Ye, Hear Ye... Please... Who Cares About What You Have To Say? They are ubiquitous. You see them on the 6 o’clock news; read about them in newspapers and hear them on breakfast radio. I’m talking about opinion leaders — those the media call to give weight to a story. But how did they get there? Why are they so important? Let’s face it plenty of others have just as much insight.

Andrew Healey Word Works

And they get valuable media exposure for free! It comes down to selling yourself. As the saying goes, ‘You can’t sell a secret’. We are used to selling our products or services, but what about selling yourself? Communicating in the media is a subtle and credible way to promote your business. It’s also highly cost-effective. Just look at what advertising costs. The problem with advertising is that it’s seen as just that: advertising. People are cynical — particularly the young — and they know you’re trying to sell something. But do they think the same when you are asked by a newspaper to comment on rising property prices because you’re prominent in the real estate industry? No they don’t. You’re just someone who knows what they’re talking about. Why else would you be asked for an opinion? And, of course, this is true, but at the same time, you’re receiving valuable exposure.

Marketing To The Media It begins with a press release. I have a client who handles employment disputes. Part of his marketing strategy is to market to the media, so a couple of years’ ago we started issuing press releases whenever he had a story we felt was newsworthy. Now, a few years on and the media call him. He has become an opinion leader.

The reasons opinion leaders get called by the media is because: 1. the media knows they exist 2. they have proved themselves as knowledgeable in their professions.

Do You Have A Story? So it’s pretty obvious that appearing in the media can be very good for business. But do you have a story? Be realistic. The truth is that the media doesn’t actually care about you; they just have an insatiable appetite for news; without news they go out of business. When writing a press release, make sure it has an eye-catching title. Editors receive hundreds of emails every day, so you need to grab their attention. It should also be to the point and written like a news article. So, who cares about what you have to say? You may be surprised. BQ

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Give It To Us Straight Customer Satisfaction Surveys So, you’re delivering a quality product/service that your customers are over-the-moon about? That’s great news - But how do you know this exactly? Are your staff telling you? Are you hearing it from your franchisees? Do you never get any complaints? Do you just know it - because that’s what you’ve worked hard to do? It’s great to have a positive self image of your business, but let’s be honest, it’s how your customers see you that’s important. So unless you’re hearing it from them, it doesn’t really hold any water. Fiona Vesey Vesey Creative

With that being the case, here are a few tips to get you on your way to quality customer feedback:

What Do You Want To Know? An extremely important question, but one that is so often overlooked. There’s no point spending time, resources or money on a survey that won’t deliver what you want. Time spent now, deciding what is important will pay dividends later. What is your Brand Promise? How can you measure if you are delivering above and beyond that promise?

Satisfaction + Market Research Of course this is a ‘Customer Satisfaction Survey’ and that is how you should present it - but, it is also the perfect vehicle for some quality market research regarding your current customers. If your customers are happy and are profitable for you, then find out who they are so you can target more people just like them.

Make It Simple, Yet Thorough ‘Clear’ and ‘Concise’ are keys here. Make it too long and you can scare off customers from participating, they may lose interest and supply incomplete information - or worse - incorrect information just because they stopped paying attention. Ask all the most important questions, then fill up with the questions that are more ‘would like to know’ rather than ‘need to know’. 32

Make Answering Easy. If you only need to know if a customer is under or over 50 years old, only give them the two options. The more options you give, that harder it is for people to decide. Clearly explain and scales used (ie: 1 = horrible, 10 = perfect), it is very easy for people to get confused and mark the wrong end of the scale. Avoid questionable grammar, such as double negative. There’s not may things more confusing than being asked if you don’t think someone doesn’t do something. Use closed questions wherever possible. This makes answering easier and directs the answers along the information path you are interested in.

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For a higher response rate and more ‘usable’ information, make it simple enough a child could do it.

Give The Opportunity For Testimonials The one exception to the closed question rule. The final question should be open for any comments the customer may have. This question will give you a lot of potential material for future promotion, plus may give you important information you overlooked when planning the survey.

Don’t offer too much though, you may attract noncustomers purely looking for a giveaway, which leads to useless information. Make sure you have a limit of one survey per person. you don’t want to be giving away more than you need to and you don’t want to skew your results because people are entering a competition 10 times with the same information, trying to win.

Encourage Participation The larger your customer cross-section referenced the more useful information you can get. Whether you give a discount on products or services, give away a free coffee or have a prize draw, you need to do something to encourage participation.

With these areas now in check, you should have a solid foundation for a satisfaction survey that will give you quality information about your customers happiness and who they really are. The next step is what to do with that information...

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Mars, Meet Venus When It Comes To Successful Networking, Everyone Wants To Get Along The realm of business today is global, not just local or national. When we set out to discover what people thought about business networking, we focused on businesspeople, but in a broad cross-section of the world. Over a three-year period, more than 12,000 businesspeople from every populated continent in the world participated in a survey about gender and business networking, the most comprehensive survey of its kind ever conducted. The survey was split almost evenly between men and women (50.2 percent men and 49.8 percent women). In their answers to the objective questions, men and women were not light years apart, as might have been expected. They mostly agreed, often quite closely, on the practices, values, and experiences of networking. The differences were oftentimes small, although statistically significant. No controversy there. Then came a little surprise. The final question on the survey was an open-ended one: Do you have any story about networking between men and women that you would like to submit for possible use in the book? If so, please describe. Nearly 1,000 participants responded. And what stories!

When given the opportunity to say something personal about their networking experiences, 545 women and 403 men revealed strikingly different perceptions. Despite their fairly close agreement on the objective questions, male and female businesspeople seemed to live in two different worlds. Many of the women wrote of feeling undervalued, intimidated, ignored, overshadowed, or patronized. Others told of sexual harassment. Some men also had negative things to say about the women they met and worked with. On the other hand, most of the men and many of the women gave positive responses. Some women even expressed a preference for working with men. Similarly, quite a few of the men said they enjoyed working with women. However, almost all the respondents, even those who had positive comments, told us how differently they viewed men and women approaching the art of networking. Most seemed to agree that in networking situations, men were more focused on business and women on relationships. In their comments, men often cited the different networking styles of men and women but, on the whole, felt women did as good a job networking as men, or better. Their difficulties with women had mostly to do with not wanting to appear sexist.

Why did the opportunity to comment about the gender differences unleash such a strikingly different torrent of opinion? In a phrase: The exception becomes the perception. Most women don’t put up sexy photos on their websites. Most men don’t behave like frat boys. But it’s the few who do that stand out. They give us the impression that there’s a lot more of that sort of thing going on out there. Then why were such a high percentage of the comments about the other sex, on both sides of the aisle, so negative? Because bad news travels faster than good news. (Remember the old saying? “Good news can wait but bad news will hunt you down.”) So although very few women report having any problems themselves, they have the perception that problems are very common because they’ve heard about them through the grapevine (or the internet). The same goes for men. They like networking with women and rarely encounter problems, but hear stories from somewhere else, often second- or third-hand, about women who are oversensitive to jokes or innocent comments or who imagine they’re being discriminated against. They also hear about women who dress provocatively and women who won’t network with men.

Dr. Ivan Misner BNI The Referral Institute

At the end of the day, both the men and women in the survey are strongly committed to networking. They believe in it, practice it regularly, and look for ways to improve their networking-related skills. It works for them. The fact that difficulties arise doesn’t alter their commitment to it. For the most part, men and women have similar goals for their networking efforts: They want to build their business. This similarity seems to compress some of the common differences that are expressed between the genders. So when a problem arises and gets in the way of good networking, good businesspeople look for solutions. Here are some “Gender DOs and DON’Ts” that are derived from the many responses in the survey that can help you to avoid potentially negative gender perceptions as you network:

Some Of The Things Men Can Do To Avoid Being Perceived As Sexist Are: 1. Maintain eye contact with women during conversation 2. Stick to conversing about business 3. Don’t get too personal

To Stop Unwelcome Advances From Men, Women Should: 1. Dress professionally 2. Have a firm handshake, and be professional 3. Under no circumstances flirt! BQ

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Design 101 Utilising A Good Visual Hierarchy A hierarchy (Greek: hierarchia (ἱεραρχία), from hierarches, “leader of sacred rites”) is an arrangement of items (objects, names, values, categories, etc.) in which the items are represented as being “above,” “below,” or “at the same level as” one another. Abstractly, a hierarchy is simply an ordered set (Wikipedia)

When designing anything, whether it be for print, web, interactive media or even product design, deciding how it’s individual components should and will be viewed is very important.

Keri Sandford

A visual hierarchy is used to guide the viewer into, around and back out of your design, in the order you want. Here are a few thoughts on utilising this invaluable tool.

Vesey Creative

Plan When you’re creating and maintaining a brand, you’re working with designers. Whether they are in-house or an external team, designers and branding are never far away from each other. Design 101 is a series aimed at bridging the gap between you and the design world. Helping you to better communicate your vision with your designer and get an understanding of ‘how they tick’.

I know we say this a lot, but planning will save time and money in the long run and will deliver much better results - every time. Plan what is the most important information and prioritise, right down to the information you need to display (possibly due to regulations) but don’t necessarily need your viewer to look at. What will you use to get their attention, and just as important, what will be the last thought you leave them with?

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Text vs Imagery

Colour/Contrast

Is is important to know that people are normally drawn to images and graphics before text. Therefore, if you need your text at the top of your hierarchy, attention needs to be put on its’ relationship with the most prominent images.

Three black cars and one yellow car in a carpark your eyes go straight for the yellow one. Why? It’s different and contrasting, it’s bright, it’s vivid. All useful tools for crating your hierarchy.

Size/Weight While size isn’t everything, it is heavily weighted when working through a hierarchy. Text that is only 1 point size larger is more likely to be read - where as increasing weight but making the smaller text bold, can easily flip the tables. The largest item will most likely be the first point of attention. If this isn’t your intention, then making use of positioning and colour/contrast will help you achieve what you want.

Positioning Take a pointer from the “above the fold” concept in newspapers and websites. Item towards the top of a design will be (subconsciously or not) considered more important. If you have a large graphic or block of text that isn’t high priority, consider a “below the fold” position to reduce it’s level in the hierarchy. In ‘The West’, most of us read from top left to bottom right. Make use of this fact when placing items of relatively equal size, colour weight, to ensure the correct order is followed.

Make your important components stand out with vivid or highly contrasting colours, push others back with lower impact colours.

Movement With websites and multi media, this could mean animation - actual movement. With print design, it means the feel of movement and the flow of the hierarchy. You can create interest with movement to draw attention to important content, or when done well, the flow of your hierarchy can create it’s own message relating to the energy and speed of your brand message. Is it upbeat and exciting, or more calm and conservative (or have you done it wrong and do you look “all over the place”)?

Establishing a hierarchy will work in your favour, producing better returns on your design investment, by guiding viewers to focus on what you want them to. So keep this in mind when working on your own inhouse designs or when setting a brief for your design team. BQ

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