My sunglass dudes would appreciate Miss Helga’s profile. Courtesy of MIT’s Ad Tech Lab.

BTW, Miss Helga is the dominatrix from VW’s new ad campaign. I love the section on “Mein Travels.” Very funny.

Today I met with the Designers to map out pagination for the brochure. This is the blueprint stage. I brought a rough content outline. We worked through each section, talking about ideas best represented visually and how to structure the copy and requisite graphical elements to maintain interest. There’s also the over-arching concept of the piece and how that builds from page to page. We need 12 pages to tell this story.

The meeting took 1 1/2 hours. Now I write a first draft of copy. The Designers will take that content and flow it into the layouts they’re developing. We’ll spend the better part of a week refining the piece before the client sees a complete first look at the brochure. And then the copy revisions begin.

Another character in this chronicle is the CEO, one of the more hip and perspicacious leaders I’ve had the pleasure to work with. And he blogs. Alot. About his company, the industry, food and music. I enjoy reading his food posts the most, since I don’t get to travel around the world pitching my company and dining on the expense account in the best restaurants a cosmopolitan city has to offer.

Yesterday the Designer met with the client again to present two new conceptual design refinements. As he was taking the team (same client-side attendees plus the CEO) through the revisions, the CEO asked to see the initial design presentation. He immediately gravitated toward the angle that yanks their brand into new visual territory. Same terrain, much better view.

It’s rare to work with a company led by a ballsy CEO. And this isn’t just about balls for balls sake, it’s about having a clear vision of where you want to take your company and making quick, instinctual decisions that further that goal. I don’t work with him everyday, but that’s my outsider impression of this CEO.

I was not at this meeting. But my meeting with the CEO about their tagline followed a similar script. We presented 10 taglines. He quickly threw out 7 of them. We discussed the other 3 for 45 minutes. The Marketing Director gravitated toward one idea, while the CEO homed in on the most abstract and aggressive idea. Despite a tagline that resonated, at one point he asked if that was all we came up with. That’s code for, gimme another round. We didn’t nail it, and he knew it.

Being being ballsy also means getting your money’s worth. There’s an unwritten code that you always push your creative team for a second round. Being on the receiving end of that directive can be frustrating, and I’ll be honest, more than once I’ve deliberately held a great idea for round two just to spare myself the extra work.

So. Ballsy. We’ll see how far that goes.

Since this is a sales piece, I asked the Marketing Director if I could interview a few of their salespeople. I wanted to ask two questions:

How do you pitch your service?
Are their any words you’d like to see included in the marketing messaging that would make your job easier?

I didn’t have any expectations for these interviews. But I learned a valuable lesson.

I helped to write the company’s external facing messaging. It was written to be direct and simple. Yet not one of the 3 sales people I interviewed used the appropriate verbiage. They all spoke of the primary benefit of the service in roughly the same way, but picked their own words to express its meaning.

I find that startling. It’s painful for marketing execs to distill a voluptous product or service into a bare-bones summary. What I did not realize is how hard it is to get an entire company to use that messaging consistently. I waltz in to a company, help them spin their words and waltz out. The real work begins when I leave.

I know that the Marketing Manager has been prepping the sales team, but there’s much work to do. Just another reminder that re-branding takes patience and constant repetition. Kinda like raising a toddler.

We presented initial brochure creative late last week.

For those of you who don’t know how creative is developed, let me explain. Typically the creative team (in this case, designers and a writer) convene in a meeting room, huddled around a creative brief. Brainstorming ensues.

A brainstorm is basically a long conversation about the client. We throw out a lot of ideas and see what sticks. I’m a vocal participant in the process, punctuating important points with wild gestures. I also tend to bring pages of ideas to a brainstorm, and maybe 3 of those ideas will actually end up getting used.

Brainstorming is my favorite part of the process. I love the serendipity and the surprise of metaphorical sharp turns down alleys that eventually open up on leafy courtyards with people sitting at bistro tables, talking, eating and drinking. On a project of this scope, I normally spend at least 4 hours “thinking” about the themes that are important to capture. I often research competitors to see how they’re talking about themselves. Sometimes I write rough headlines and bring them to the brainstorm.

This time, I came to the meeting cold. I figured I could skate by on team chemistry and catch up on the writing in the first copy draft. The team on this project has excellent chemistry. I’ve worked with the Design Director for years, and both Designers are familiar to me. They are all people with diverse interests who are extremely good at what they do. That makes for lively conversation and a level of trust that the work will not suck. Despite my lack of preparation, I walked out of our initial brainstorm feeling positive that this project was in good hands.

That’s not always the case. I’ve worked with designers who are never happy with what I bring to the brainstorming table or the copy I write. I’m pretty sure that I don’t suck that bad or I wouldn’t be doing what I do for the length of time that I’ve done it. So it really is about chemistry. This applies to clients as well. It takes time to build that chemistry. If I was a marketing exec looking to hire a creative team, I would inquire about the chemistry. I’d want to know upfront who my team was, and how long they worked together. In some ways, this is more important than experience.

In our creative presentation, we showed 3 design directions to the Marketing Director and 3 of their user interface designers. Everything we do has to play out on the web, so it’s important to have the UI people involved. We went in with 3 very different approaches, ranging from a safe, expected evolution to a far out, make you twitchy treatment.

The reaction to the presentation was positive. They did not choose a direction in the meeting, prefering to shop it around and think about over the weekend. This is common. I suspect that they’ll want to merge elements of each concept, or go with the middle ground.

In the interest of paying more attention to this blog, I am going to report about a dot-com branding project. I am not a reporter, so the facts will be spotty and tainted with my writely inclination to embellish. Remember that.

The client would cringe at the thought of being a “dot-com.” It’s true, though. Some would call them a Web 2.0 company. They have two audiences: businesses and consumers. B2B and B2C. Ah, acronyms, how I’ve missed you.

I’m about one-third into their brand evolution. They are paying me to tell them how to write about their product. I’m collaborating with a design firm, which is responsible for the new “look” of the company.

I’ve written this company’s tagline and a brochure.

I like the client. They’re smart and ask tough questions. They are motivated to change and are relying on this brand evolution to generate revenue. They’re getting feedback from their base that people don’t understand what exactly it is that they do. A good problem for brand work to solve. They need to be real, and offer real benefits, to be successful.

The players:

Design Director
Designers
CEO
Marketing Director
Brand Strategist

I will fill in back story when action is slow. I suck at pictures, and it would be rather odd to see a writer snapping photos in a creative presentation, so this will mostly be prose.

Words I just read in this report that define how companies will have to market to stay alive:

bottom up

experience

community

From Charlene Li.

Blogs are here to stay. Their shape will change, but the people want to have their say.

More and more companies are killing off the press release and using their blogs as primary marketing tools, especially when taking a stance on an issue. From Steve Rubel’s post, One if By Land, Two if By Blog.

One of my clients, Jobster, takes this approach with their blog. They’re creating marketing content. You’ve got to have content to tell a story.

Lululemon has a great mission statement, proof that corporate communications do not need to be as dull as unbuttered toast. In fact, it’s the most outrageously expressive approach I’ve encountered.

The reason this works well is that the company understands their target audience, people who are athletically obsessed with $50 of jingle jangle to spend on a yoga top. They appeal to the side of the person that wants to be different, to have work/life balance and to grow old happily. They talk to the audience rather than at them. What a great way to stand out in the cluttered athletic apparel market.

Beyond that, Lululemon’s products are high quality and well designed. With every purchase they include a copy of their manifesto. This made me smile.

Every company should aim to articulate their brand with this much passion, regardless of what they’re selling.

I talked to the Cornish College of the Arts Design Program’s senior class today. They’re going to be designing an attendee packet for the Icograda Design Week Seattle conference that I’m working on. I’m in charge of all the writing and messaging for this event. The questions asked by the students reminded me of the importance of audiences. In marketing and advertising, it all comes back to the audience. Good design, advertising and branding invariably expose a hidden desire or need. I hope that I helped this group to get into the heads of their audience. I’ll be going back to class in November to see what they come up with.