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August 2005 Archives
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August 30, 2005
The Power of Weakness
Posted by Brad Abare | Filed under: Marketing
Earlier this year, in a Monday Morning Memo from the Wizard of Ads, Roy H. Williams had some keen insights on being authentic when it comes to marketing.
Features and benefits, features and benefits, features and benefits. We've polished our pitches to such a degree that we've dimmed our abilities to persuade. The customer is only half listening because the inner self is asking, "What are they not telling me?"
To win back the attention of customers and earn credibility, Williams suggests that marketers learn to name features, benefits, and the downside.
Trust me, the customer is already trying to figure out the downside. Why not just tell them? It's the best possible way to insulate yourself from the backlash when they finally figure it out for themselves. ... This powerful "tell the truth" technique is easily perverted into just another oily sales trick when the downside you name isn't the real one. As Francois Duc de La Rochefoucauld observed 350 years ago, "We only confess our little faults to persuade people that we have no big ones."
I agree with Roy. I guess people aren't as stupid as we think.
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August 26, 2005
20 Tips for Doing Business with Personality
Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks | Filed under: Business
This originally appeared in our e-mail newsletter. If you're not getting it, you can sign up today.
1. Know your customers by name.
2. Be a stats junkie. You can't be more effective if you don't know what works.
3. Make your customer's lives easy, and they'll make your life easy.
4. Don't forget people. Behind every number and every dollar is a person. They are your livelihood.
5. Don't assume last year's sales as a given for this year. Everything has to be earned.
Continue reading "20 Tips for Doing Business with Personality"
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August 25, 2005
What's the Worst That Could Happen?
Posted by Brad Abare | Filed under: Business
The May 2005 issue of Worthwhile magazine had a feature on Bob Parsons, the founder of Parsons Technology and more recently GoDaddy.com. This guy has balls. Growing up "as dirt poor as a church rat," Parsons learned not only to expect the worst, he practiced quantifying it. "When I start feeling afraid of what's going on with GoDaddy, I take out a piece of paper and say 'What's the most terrible thing that could happen? When you see it in writing, you realize it's nothing to get paralyzed over.'"
From launching software that never sold to being hospitalized for exhaustion, Parsons would end up selling his technology company to Intuit for $64 million. GoDaddy, not without its start-up setbacks, is now No. 8 on Inc.'s list of fastest growing companies.
Among some of his rules for success?
- Stay out of your comfort zone.
- When you're ready to quit, you're closer than you think.
- Focus on what you want to happen.
- Measure everything of significance.
- Don't take yourself too seriously.
- There's always a reason to smile. Find it.
At Personality™, we're passionate about helping your purpose become an exclamation. What better reminder than from a guy who knows risk, knows reward, and loves the return from both. That's some personality.
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August 24, 2005
Subscribe to Think Personality
Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks | Filed under: Personality News
You can stay up to date with Personality™ by signing up for our e-mail newsletter or you can subscribe to our RSS feeds and get the updates when you want them.
What is RSS? It stands for Really Simple Syndication, and it's a way you can have a web site's content delivered to you. You'll be alerted when a web site updates without having to visit the site or give out your e-mail address. All you need is an RSS reader, like the free web-based Bloglines service. It puts you in control, so no one can sell your e-mail address or send you junk you didn't ask to receive.
Bottom line: It's a great way to increase your productivity and stay on top of what's happening, not just with Personality™, but with any of the web sites you visit.
Check our sidebar for four different types of feeds. What's the difference? Different technologies implemented at different times. Atom and RSS 2.0 are the newest, and RSS 2.0 is our most popular feed.
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Mag Ads Go High Tech
Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks | Filed under: Advertising
Magazine advertising is going high tech as advertisers and publishers are trying to find new ways to get attention. Gimmicks include sounds, lights and scents, just about anything to get people to take notice. The extra touches do come at a hefty price though as the extra inserts can slow printing and have to be thoroughly tested.
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August 23, 2005
Creating a Catchy Slogan
Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks | Filed under: Brand & Identity
Fast Company has a good entry on how to craft a catchy slogan. It includes a link to a PDF worksheet that will help you generate ideas, as well as other tools that can help you hone in on that perfect idea.
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August 22, 2005
Business Card Tips
Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks | Filed under: Marketing
Check out
BusinessCardTips.com for lots of helpful ideas about how to get the most out of your business cards. The tips include ways to get the most out of networking—like giving your cards out two at a time—and using them as bookmarks so you'll always have one handy.
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August 19, 2005
Digital vs. Print
Posted by Ken Erickson | Filed under: Technology
I remember a professor of mine in college asking us if we thought the print magazine, would be replaced by digital magazine. As a huge fan of magazines I thought, "Yeah right—you’ve got to be kidding!" Right? I mean, any mag lover can't deny there's something about holding and flipping though a magazine, that cannot be replaced.
That may be true, but the digital magazine is growing. When subscribed, Zinio for example will send you your magazine digitally with all the bells and whistles (articles, ads, tear-outs) that its print counterpart has, but will also give you the ease of quick URL links that the print does not. Plus, you don’t have to worry about finding a place to stash your past subscriptions that you just can't part with.
And talk about going digital, this public high school in Arizona takes the cake. They are doing away with text-books altogether, and going wireless, all-laptop!
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August 18, 2005
Nike's Real Deal
Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks | Filed under: Advertising
When Lance Armstrong appeared on The Late Show with David Letterman they of course talked about his unprecedented seventh Tour de France victory. But then Letterman held up a copy of Sports Illustrated and breezed past the Armstrong cover to the Nike ad on the back page. It featured a 1996 picture of Armstrong when he was in the midst of his battle with cancer. Letterman hailed it as the real deal. Personality doesn't always have to be bright and bubbly—sometimes it just has to be authentic.
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August 9, 2005
Create Your Own Shoe
Posted by Ken Erickson | Filed under: Creativity
I left the Puma store with my mind spinning in possibilities. What they had set up was a shoe station with a number of bins; and in each
bin were different fabric colors, textures, and patterns that you choose for every component of the shoe, so that you could design your own!
Vans, Converse (which has a fantastic website by the way) and Nike all have online shops that let you create your own shoe. In fact (this may be rumor), I’ve heard that you can submit your own artwork that can be printed on a shoe!
That's personality.
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August 5, 2005
Quality as a Branding and Marketing Decision
Posted by Shawn Stewart | Filed under: Business
A few of us were eating lunch together in the office the other day. Our conversation found itself on a familiar male topic, movies. One of the guys here has never seen the Lord of the Rings trilogy! That's right—they've never seen the movie juggernaut of the early 21st century. We ended up discussing the amazing quality of the film and the painstaking attention to detail. For instance, all of the chain mail armor in the movie was built link by link by an artisan. Everything was real even down to the stitching on the inside of the clothes, which we never saw on the screen.
This stirred up a whole other conversation: What ever happened to real quality?
Continue reading "Quality as a Branding and Marketing Decision"
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August 2, 2005
Business on the Edge
Posted by Brian Zopf | Filed under: Business
"Great ideas, like humor, come from the corners of the mind, out on the edge. That's why humor can break up log-jams in both personal relationships and in business. Cutting edge, leading edge, bleeding edge, the edge of inspiration, on the edge of our seats. The edge is exciting and risky and extreme. Great ideas can come from anywhere, but most of them turn up on the edge."
(from Lovemarks by Kevin Roberts, CEO Worldwide, Saatchi & Saatchi)
Continue reading "Business on the Edge"
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August 1, 2005
Faithfulness in Business
Posted by Shawn Stewart | Filed under: Business
Last Friday marked the end of an era for General Motors. General Motors on a whole might not realize it, but the men and women who build their cars in Lordstown, Ohio will notice it today. On Friday Loye Stewart, my dad, retired after just under 40 years of faithful service. That really has had me thinking this week, as I'm sure many of you know people from that generation who have spent the majority of their lives helping to build a single brand or business while caring for and feeding a family. This kind of company loyalty is really something less and less familiar to our culture.
Continue reading "Faithfulness in Business"
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