C Notes Newsletter Issue 5

Is Your Image Consistent?

Chances are, you needn’t be convinced of the importance in maintaining a consistent image in all your corporate communications, signage and collateral material. You’re probably already well aware that such consistency eliminates confusion among your customers, and helps to build a strong, easily recognizable brand.

You might be shocked, then, by even a cursory glance through your company’s archives. If your company is like most, you’re likely to see that all sorts of variations in your identity elements have crept in throughout the years. Most such variations will be minor; a few might be distressingly dramatic.

We call this creeping inconsistency, and it’s something every company needs to guard against. Its roots are innocent enough; slight variations can occur when you change printers or designers, other “modifications” happen when employees order their own letterheads and business cards. No matter what the cause, the sum result is irreversible damage to the integrity of the corporate identity and the brand it represents.

The best protection against creeping inconsistency is control. Stringent—and enforced—guidelines for the usage of identity elements will emphasize to your employees the paramount importance of consistency. For some companies, it makes sense to appoint a single authority to oversee everything related to uniformity of identity. Finally, you might consider developing a professionally prepared identity standards guide. Such manuals establish every benchmark your identity requires for total consistency— from typefaces to correct logo usage to color matching.

Company image is a huge investment. Creeping inconsistency erodes the value of that investment. Fortunately, a bit of attention and effort are all that are required to reverse the erosion and protect your valuable image assets.

Your Website: How Much Content Do You Need?

Do you have a sales pitch? Or at the very least, are you accustomed to introducing yourself and your company in a compelling, informative, maybe even memorable way? If you’ve already mastered this technique of telling your company’s story, then you are well on your way to shaping the content you need to tell that story on the World Wide Web.

Think of your company’s website as the most comprehensive business card ever created, able to leap continents and oceans to offer the message of your choosing to a nearly unlimited audience. Any single viewer in an audience of billions may be the customer you’ve been looking for. So squandering this opportunity can be a costly blunder. The content you choose in combination with how your story is told, can make all the difference in the world.

So how much content do you need? The answer is deceptively simple: you need enough to convey the message; no more, no less.

Think again about your sales approach. Chances are, the amount of information it imparts has been very carefully, very deliberately calculated. You tell the prospect just enough to prompt questions and tickle interest. You probably don’t tell them everything, and you certainly don’t weigh them down with eye-glazing minutiae and details.

Web content should follow the same pattern. It should introduce the company, identify its principals and describe its goods or services, and answer enough questions to pique interest. If the site is designed as an e-commerce portal, all elements should funnel the user toward the order” page. If it is designed to generate inquiries, the ultimate goal is the “contact” or “sales rep” section. In either case, the prospect has gleaned enough data about your company to keep them interested.

Does this mean you must write your web content yourself? Not at all. Whether the content is developed in-house, by freelancers or through the aegis of your web developers, you, as decision-maker, still control the direction, tone and voice of your content, and every nuance of its message. You retain the ability to shape your web content into the persuasive selling system it must be.

And a happy fact of e-life is that it’s never too late to enliven your written content. Even on a long-established site, text is relatively easy to change—usually with little impact on site design or architecture. It’s possible to upgrade a site from drab to fab in a matter of days, not weeks.

Web content has the capability of transmitting your own unique persuasiveness to every corner of the world. Give it the attention it deserves.

Planning Always Saves More Than Cost

A favorite and familiar archetype in the corporate world is that of the shoot-from-the-hip executive; a brilliant if impulsive business professional whose intuition is among the company’s greatest assets. This is the executive who knows a great idea when he or she hears it, who believes wholeheartedly in immediate action, who gives the company the ability to turn on a dime.

Certainly, there is nothing wrong with initiative, nor with being proactive. But in advertising and marketing, at least…Planning always saves more energy, time and money than it costs.

Too often, companies take an “a la carte” approach to advertising. This means they might engage a direct mail initiative in the fall, a PR campaign a few months later, and a trade ad series months after that. This piecemeal method might be due to our brilliant executive’s latest intuition, or it might simply be an attempt to save on professional consultation fees. In either case, though, the company may lose far more than it gains.

Why? Think about it. When your marketing team is privy to your long-term plans, they are better positioned to help you realize economies that would be otherwise forsaken. Even with widely separated initiatives such as in our example, a well-informed marketing group would be able to coordinate photo shoots, copywriting, interviewing and printing with much greater efficiency. The result is more cohesiveness, better consistency, and potentially thousands of dollars in savings. This team approach need not conflict with the executive’s shoot-from-the-hip style. After all, a deep appreciation for strategy and tactics is another great archetypal corporate trait. A few hours invested each quarter in an in-depth marketing planning session will bring returns at least as great as any intuitive masterstroke.