There’s a lot going on in this sweet little finishing touch from Vimeo, which appears at the bottom of a video when you haven’t logged in to their site.

“Conversation” and “your voice” entreat you to join, “five seconds” says it’s quick and worth your time.

A very well-written example of how brand voice should be applied to user interface copy.

I’ve been busy. Hence this blog’s extended nap. I feel bad about this but there are good reasons. What I did with my past year:

- Rebranded a major dot-com consumer service, with special attention to brand voice in the user interface and every customer touch point (think log ins, error messages and privacy policies).
- Developed messaging and copy for a relationship-management service now in public beta.
- Repositioned a global health and wellness holding company, writing new elevator statements and a brand book.
- Launched a line of specialty beverages targeted at women, including product line naming and copy.
- Positioned and created the brand voice for a new dental analytics company.
- Repositioned a mid-sized law firm (website launch coming soon).
- Refreshed the brand voice and website copy for a top structural engineering firm (Snoozer? No way, these people are some of the smartest and most creative I’ve had the pleasure to work with).

And right now I’m in the thick of three adventures:

- Naming, positioning and launching Seattle’s first blow-dry bar.
- Writing the introduction for a leading design firm’s monograph.
- Naming, brand strategy, brand voice and rollout of a national preschool (with social media a core part of the marketing experience).

I also:

- Started ballet lessons again after 15 years, even performing on stage. (I was a ballerina in Britt 1.0)
- Grew a vegetable garden, with lots of help from my husband and daughter.
- Continue to raise a highly spirited six year old, and eek out the time to volunteer in her class.
- Managed to read almost all of my New Yorkers.

Whew. So go easy on yourself, girl!

I was surprised to receive this email from Anthropologie:

Why this elicited a positive response:

- I sometimes like Anthropologie products.
- I care about eating local produce.
- It made me think of Anthropologie in a new way.

Why this works as break-through marketing:

- They’re collaborating with local superstars on key themes customers care about (they get their audience’s motivations).
- The design of the email is pleasing to the eye and on brand.

This treatment also implies that Anthropologie is a sustainably minded company. I know that they manufacture their products under dubious worker conditions, but it’s a cunning way to make me feel more comfortable about buying from them as I try to be intentional about where my money goes.

John Cook at TechFlash writes about various web sites that allow you to search inside of Obama’s speech for words and phrases. He covers Delve Networks, Microsoft and CNN’s Photosynth, and ReadWriteWeb’s use of Wordle’s cloud tags of current and past speeches.

When developing tone and brand personalities, Wordle is a useful tool to help visualize and prioritize words.

For marketers, brand managers, design directors, designers and anyone with a general interest in messaging strategy, I’m going to deconstruct the Obama campaign’s successful implementation of a single message.

I’ll start at the end, with Obama’s transition. The Change.gov website is up. As expected, it’s brilliant in its simplicity and consistency.

More to come.

While listening to NPR, I heard the sponsor’s spiel for the MacArthur Foundation:

“The MacArthur Foundation supports creative people and effective institutions committed to building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world. In addition to selecting the MacArthur Fellows, we work to defend human rights, advance global conservation and security, make cities better places, and understand how technology is affecting children and society.”

“Did I just hear the word ‘verdant’ in a pitch?”

Here’s why this impresses me:

1. “Green” has lost it’s power as an actionable word. There are green homes, green cars, green living, the green party, green jobs. It’s become as numbing as state-of-the-art, organic or 24/7. We read or listen over these words because we’re so used to encountering them. Verdant tips your muscle memory off balance. You feel it the next day. Verdant is a better green.

2. It takes guts to choose unique words. There are many bigwigs on the MacArthur Foundation’s staff and board. I’m sure they’re all smart and opinionated people. To be able to push through a mission statement like that is rare and remarkably savvy. This expresses the caliber of their organization and their mission.

3. They understand their audience. This is NPR. The people who listen likely know of the foundation through their genius awards, support it, and have a general sense of what verdant means. I frequently get push back on unorthodox word choices due to a marketer feeling they’ll lose their audience. Loquacious comes to mind. I once used that word instead of talkative. I admit it probably wasn’t appropriate for a product targeting middle-America consumers, but I feel my role is to push clients to use words and tone as a competitive differentiator.

And verdant is just one little word in a well-crafted mission statement. Other outstanding word choices are “effective,” “just” and “peaceful.” They’re also really showing their heart in the second sentence. These are some of the important themes our civilization is dealing with.

Also commendable is that they’re using their positioning consistently. Same language in the radio ads and annual report as on their website. I’d wager that their people have memorized this language and use it when asked about the foundation.

When I talk about the three questions you must answer compellingly when creating your positioning, this is exactly what I hope to hear. Way to go MacArthur Foundation!

Jan: …With marketing dollars, invest only what can be measured and cut everything else; but now is time to be aggressive with company’s messaging—so PR and communications strategy important (can do a lot these days with relatively low investment). Focus on building out only the essential features of your product, forget the nice to haves; make certain that the features you build are what your customers actually want.

Greg: Getting funding is still a marketing exercise, but one that has to be done with integrity. As investors become more conservative, they will take more time to dig into your business. Nothing will send investors running faster than a sense that a founder/CEO has not been 100% truthful. I think the key is to get an investor to come over to your side of the table. Ask for advice. Don’t shy away from talking about challenges and issues. If an investor is truly interested in putting money to work in your business, he or she will want to engage at that level.

(from Alyssa Royse’s interview on Seattle 2.0 with VC’s Greg Gottesman of Madrona and Jan Hendrickson of Denny Hill Capital.)

I know many small business owners and I’m always amazed when they fail to mention the name of their business during social conversations about work.

The question “What do you do?” replaced “Where do you work?” some time ago. Probably because it’s a more open question and it allows for the possibility that the answeree does something non-traditional. But don’t miss the chance to say the name of your business just because that isn’t exactly what is asked of you. Consider the following:

Q: What do you do?
A: I’m a copywriter.

Vs.

Q: What do you do?
A: I work for Wordslinger. We write corporate poetry. I’m a copywriter there.

The later introduces the name of our business and provides more information of interest, which encourages continued conversation about our business. If you own the small business you’re marketing then by all means say that, “I own a company called Wordslinger.” It’s a simple way to build interest and brand recognition.

People who work for brand name companies don’t face this challenge. For example, “I work for Starbucks.” Or, “I work for Microsoft.” Get those people talking about you and your small business by introducing it at your next social gathering.

Starbucks put signage that features their version of the famous Egg McMuffin® in stores this week. I wrote about the sudden appearance of McDonalds-like breakfast at Starbucks three weeks ago, before the new signs went up. Seems that my hunch was right.

I wanted this to be a clever competitive move by Starbucks but the new signs are flat and uninspired. The copy reads, “Your morning coffee’s kindred spirit.” That line needs to work harder. Kindred spirit sounds recycled and the whole line feels like a product push. Why wouldn’t they use language that announces their breakfast offering with pride? They call it an “oven-roasted morning sandwich.” That could fit with the word “culinary,” which they introduced at the beginning of the year but they didn’t make that connection. In fact they made the name hard to read at the bottom of the sign. Before I noticed the name, I turned to my friend, and pointed to the sign and said, “Look, an EggMcMuffin®.”

I tried to take a picture of the new sign to share with you but the store manager asked me to stop—copyright issues. I left feeling like they’re just pushing another new product. There is no spark.

Seth Godin will give a keynote at the Search Engine Strategies 2007 Conference and Expo. I’m a big Godin fan. He suggests that individuals and businesses approach change as an opportunity for something better and I think that’s smart.

A self-proclaimed “change junkie,” Godin has written several books about marketing, change and work. It sounds like his keynote will update the discussion:

“Fourteen trends are changing marketing forever, and you and your clients have the chance of a generation to reinvent what you do and how you do it.”

As a writer, reinvention is a big part of my work with clients. Companies that introduce new words at the right time can take advantage of marketing trends to reap reward or stay competitive in spite of market change. As I wrote in a recent post, I think Starbucks is doing that with the word “breakfast” right now.

Groundswell’s Josh Bernoff got a chance to sit in on a Webcast preview of Godin’s speech and he tells us that the 14 trends include things like, “direct communication between producers and consumers, amplification of individuals’ voices, short attention spans, the long tail, and the shift from How Many to Who…”

Trends like these are changing the way we talk to each other. In that way, they require that we pay close attention to the way we talk about what we do, who we are and what we stand for. Fortunately, there is always room to change our tone.