Brand Thinking
Scientific problem solving & your Brand
The next time you have to break down a problem, consider using George Heilmeier’s method for solving research challenges:
- What are you trying to do? Articulate your objectives using absolutely no jargon.
- How is it done today, and what are the limits of current practice?
- What is new in your approach and why do you think it will be successful?
- Who cares? If you are successful, what difference will it make?
- What are the risks?
- How much will it cost?
- How long will it take?
- What are the mid-term and final “exams” to check for success?
(via John Maeda)
I hate funnels
Ben Chestnut, the CEO and co-founder of Mailchimp, hates funnels. More specifically “Marketing Funnels” and I absolutely agree! I encourage you to read the full article. Here is a tasty excerpt:
… I hate funnels. And professional marketers just won’t shut up about those God forsaken things. The idea is that you need a ton of website visitors, then some of them become become leads, and then after you do something (the usual recommendation is to bombard the leads with marketing automation) they relent and pay you money, thus becoming a “customer.”
… I hate this, because it’s shortsighted. Deliver awesome customer service. Delight them. Empower them. When I say “empower them” I mean empower them for free, with “no strings attached.” Because when companies make people sign up and register to download their content, we all know they’re about to feed us into the automation meat grinder.
The importance of color in branding
Nick Babich writes:
“There are no wrong colors. What matters most is how to use them.”
Color is one of the most powerful tools in a designer’s toolkit. It can draw attention, set a mood, and influence a users’ emotions, perceptions and actions.
There is a simple interior design rule 60–30–10 that works well for many designs. It’s a timeless decorating technique that can help you put a color scheme together easily. 60% is your dominant hue, 30% is secondary color and 10% is for accent color. This formula works because it creates a sense of balance and allows the eye to move comfortably from one focal point to the other.
Read the full article HERE >
4 important stories to know
This from Bernadette Jiwa, the brilliance behind The Story of Telling. A quick, and excellent, article.
“Every marketer knows he needs to tell his customers a story about what he’s creating—one he hopes will help them buy into his idea or buy his product…. Many businesses devote a disproportionate amount of time trying to woo and please people who will never become their ideal customers.”
Read it in full HERE >
Photo by Nicola Jones
5 bullshit metrics you need to stop using
A very enlightening must read by Daniel Hochulifor those of us who geek out on our marketing metrics and how they influence actual customers:
5 bullshit metrics you need to stop using to measure content marketing success.
They are:
- Impressions
- ROI
- Bounce Rate
- Benchmarks
- The Funnel
The way you talk about them and the way you measure them is bullshit.
Read the full article HERE>