What’s Your USP? If you’ve studied marketing at all, you’ll recognize that acronym as Unique Selling Proposition—the one, unique feature that distinguishes your business from others.

Your USP is a clearly defined, easy to remember statement that describes how you are different (read ‘better’) than anyone else out there. It is repeated throughout all promotional efforts and key people in your organization can recite it in their sleep. The focus of your USP is outward, not inward—there should be a clear benefit to your customers. Here’s a big tip: using words like ‘quality,’ and ‘excellence’ mean nothing to a customer. Those superfluous terms are not distinguishing. Your USP speaks to a need or problem that you promise to solve.

Take a fresh look at all your promotional efforts. The one common question that all of your potential customers will have is “Why should I use them?” If you aren’t giving them an answer, they won’t.

You’ve heard the saying ‘You only have one chance to make a first impression.’

Well, have you considered how your business is making first impressions? They happen wherever you attempting to reach out to your customers or other group of interest. Website, brochure, stationery, signage. We all have experience making decisions about who to use/buy from. What influences our decision process? Say you are looking to buy a widgit. You do your research and visit 5 sites selling the widgit you want. Pricing, you find, is relatively similar among the sites. So, what factor influences your decision most? You might look for user reviews or recommendations, but how can you really trust those? Your answer most likely is the appearance of the business and the impression is gives. You pick the business that represents itself in the most professional, trustworthy manner.

Now take that personal customer-side experience and apply it to your website (or printed materials). What’s the reaction? Do you come across the way you want to? How about compared to your competition? Do you stand apart? Is your USP (more on that in a later post) evident?

Finessing your image should be a constant effort and there’s always room to improve if your goal is to make that first impression which closes the deal at the end.

Even in a down-turned economy, people and businesses still have needs and wants. That means that some of those needs and wants likely fall into your category of business. Translation: You still have potential new customers out there!

During this time of economic strain, most businesses have budgets which are dictated by number-crunchers. Sometimes, especially for small businesses, the number-cruncher is merely another part the brain of a multi-tasking entrepreneur. The mindset is one of protection which often results in decisions that are detrimental to business growth. As budget cuts are made, advertising and marketing are right at the top.

The truth is that most businesses (this includes your competitors) are not in front of those potential new customers because of slashed budgets. So now is the time to take advantage of this opportunity. You can be the one, visible solution to your customer’s needs and wants. Get in front of them now while the time is right. Eventually, as the economy turns up (and it will), you won’t be fighting to be seen from within a dense crowd of competition. They’ll already know you!

Now is the time. Take advantage of it!

Years ago, I used to go bass fishing with a friend of mine. It was always both enjoyable and frustrating. He was a very good fisherman. He would always catch fish—and big ones! So I tried to learn from him. I would use the same bait, cast to the same areas, and come up with—usually nothing! After some time I found out what the big difference was. Presentation! He knew how to maneuver his rubber worm, crankbait, or spinner so that the fish were not only attracted, but they actively pursued it. So I watched and learned.

Graphic Design, like fishing, can achieve great results, or come up with nothing. It’s all about presentation. Not every fish, at any point in a day or season, will be tempted by a particular bait.  A good fisherman needs to know what to use at any given time, accounting for weather, time of day, time of year, condition and depth of water, and many other factors. I’ve seen a lot of incredibly visually pleasing designs by very talented and creative designers that miss the mark completely. They won’t catch any fish!

Good design must appeal to the right ‘fish.’ There is always a target audience to whom we want to appeal. They will be attracted to a particular kind of look and, as importantly, message. When done right, they will ‘bite’ ( a little Cochoranesque, I know). When done wrong, no matter how pretty or colorful your bait is, they will treat it like just another piece of something in the flow of information and then promptly forget about it.

If your message is not hooking any new customers, contact us for some help.

On behalf of graphic designers across the United States, I would like to request a portion of the Multi-Billion dollar investment that the government is forcing the tax-paying citizens to cover.

This economy, the worst since the Great Depression (in case you hadn’t heard), is affecting not only industries of mediocre importance, like financing and autos, but an industry that is critical to the backbone of our economy—Graphic Design! If there is a collapse in the Graphic Design sector of our economy, the impact will be felt deeply within every corporation that understands the power of design. Recovery will take many years, after which time many well-known brands will be distant memories.

One can only imagine the fall-out as right-brain replacements offer up their feeble concepts for communicating the most important messages to target audiences—brand identities all represented by raster-format, oval logos encircled with Arial or Times; collateral materials as 8.5×11 tri-folds with off-center content, at least 5 font families, and clip-art images—all with drop shadows and an emboss effect; web site re-designs created with Front Page (enough said!); animated gif banner-ads everywhere; generic packaging that offers an equality to all brands; and a pervasive use of existing Power Point templates. This cruel assault on the visual senses of the American public can not be allowed, not to mention the devastation it would cause on the value of each business.

It must be recognized that the trickle-down effect of a collapse in the Graphic Design market would be catastrophic. Foreign powers would strengthen while the United States is crippled! This can not be allowed and the United States government must intervene to prevent the devastation. Sufficient funds are to be funneled directly to working designers everywhere, and now is not soon enough!

Mr. Politician, hear the cries of your people! Act now!

All design has an inherent power. Using a loose definition of the term design, we can say that everything that has been created with intent has power. It may be subtle—a crayon-drawn Christmas  scene from the mind and hands of a first grader has the power to remind us of innocence and dreams. Or it may be more affecting—the captured image of a hungry, third-world child stirs our sense of compassion.

When applied to business graphics, the effects of the power of design are more far-reaching. Good design can (and should) be part of a business-building strategy. Bad design can prevent a business from growing simply because of the impression it gives to potential customers. Think of any large corporation. Now picture the way they present their business graphically through any medium. While we can be critical (and as designers, we will be!), any successful corporation is presented to their audience with some degree of professional design. Do you think that a company gets successful first and then says “hey, now that we’re successful, lets start spending some of our profits on professional design!”? No, the professional design was an early and critical part of the success story.

Why Do I Need You?

About five years ago I made a cold call to a very small engineering company. After hearing my brief introduction and explanation of services, the lone man in the office reached across his desk a picked up a tri-fold brochure to hold it up for me. He proudly said “I made this myself and printed it on my inkjet printer, why do I need you?” His masterpiece was on plain white paper with bright, multi-colored type—shaped, shadowed, styled and positioned boldly across the center. A clip-art, cartoon illustration in a square box placed near the top and left of center. And some smaller, yet still too large and bold, text near the bottom. After a quick and deliberate shut-down of my defense mechanisms, I smiled and simply said, “I guess your all set, have a nice day.”

Just last week I was in that area again. I went in and introduced myself to the same man. It could have been five years ago. Everything looked the same and there was no obvious sign of any business success of growth. One man, one cluttered desk. I suppose its possible that this man is a millionaire because of his business savvy and just wants to downplay his success, but my guess is…no.

Would my help have changed his success? I’d like to think so, but there are too many other variables. What I do believe is that, based on what I saw of that brochure, he was hurting his own business.

A Better Example

Here’s a better example which includes you, the reader. We depend on the internet for so many things now. How many times have we searched for a product that we wanted to buy and found multiple online stores selling the same product? How do we then narrow down our choice? Price? Yes, of course. Then what? When there are multiple e-stores listing our product for the same price, including shipping, what drives our decision? Easy. The one that appears to be the most reliable, reputable, and professional. That is a perception which comes from the look and feel of the business’ site—the design! The e-commerce site which has made an investment in professional design for their site gets a return on that investment with our purchase of a product.

So design has power. Power to persuade or power to dissuade. Power to compel or power to repel. Power to make a sale or power to convince a potential customer to buy from a competitor.

There are some who don’t understand the power of design. There are those who don’t recognize that some people have made a life’s work of understanding and applying good design, not for the sake of visual appeal, but to achieve a specified objective on behalf of a client.

As one of those designers, I would welcome an opportunity to meet with you for a no-cost evaluation of your business identity. Contact me anytime.

I often use the phrase ‘push the brand’ when referring to one of many parts of an overall strategy used to build brand equity. I like the phrase because it reinforces the fact that proper implementation of any marketing, advertising, or sales strategy requires a comprehensive, cohesive, and consistent approach.

All too often, I see businesses that have an inconsistent and non-cohesive implementation of identity. Their logo may be represented in many variations of color and style; their letterhead looks very different from their business cards; a website which looks like it was put together by a programmer (read ‘non-designer’) who didn’t really care about identity—never-mind simple rules of design; a brochure that makes use of colors that don’t match or complement other applications like signage; and other such evidences that key people are not talking and there is no oversight. These mistakes do very little to push an overall brand. Instead they attempt to push smaller, independent brands, to the detriment of the business.

While I love to create within the confines of a specific project, I really get excited whenever I am invited to look at a business’ entire set of communication methods and tools. Through the process, there is a sense of cleaning and ordering after which a side-by-side comparison reveals a renewed brand identity that spreads consistently across all applications. Each project possesses the power to help ‘push the brand.’

If you would like a no-cost evaluation of your business’ identity, please contact me.