Lousy Service? Yes. This sign hangs in their front window. And they’re not kidding. If you order one of their delicious pizzas to be delivered it will take an hour. Minimum.

I love audaciously honest brand personas. And Big Tomato Pizza has one of the most honest I’ve seen. It’s in a tiny, funky, hole-in-the-wall location. The people working there look like they know pizza. Not the chic, Gourmet-Wood-Fired-Oven variety, but the only-thing-you-can-get-at-2:00am variety. In fact, they look like they probably only sling pizzas when their bands don’t have a gig.

But because these folk know pizza, they know how to make it awesome. And when they opened, all us Gourmet-Wood-Fired-Oven foodies flocked to them. They were overwhelmed.

But did they ramp up to meet the demand, expanding operations with teams of minimum-wage workers cranking out uninspired food? Nope. They stayed exactly the same. And within a couple of months they had put this neon sign in the window.

Perfect.

They trained people to come with the expectation that they were not going to get fast, bend-over-backward service. Just wonderful, flavorful pizza served with attitude and urban style. 

Authentic brands reach out and grab your attention. And when they back fantastic pizza you have a powerful combination – especially when you’re hungry at 2:00am.

We work with companies every day to develop and strengthen their brands. I don’t just mean their identities, or even their brand stories, but their brand experiences.

At Cooper Smith & Company, we help companies ensure their customers have a specific, consistent, memorable experiences with a company at every level. We specialize in developing the brand experience at the beginning of the relationship —marketing, client acquisition, sales, and delivery—and in all forms of customer engagement.

It’s easy to demonstrate how print, web and email experiences need to integrate. But to many businesses, the social media experience feels disjointed and unrelated to their “traditional” customer  brand experience.

So when prospects don’t see how social media has a role in creating a brand persona, I show them my daughters’ social media pages.

To Google you is to know you.

My daughter is a pretty typical high-school sophomore, except she innately seems to understand the concept of branding.  If you take a look at her Facebook, Twitter, Wanelo, Instagram, Spotify, or Snapchat you’ll see a very consistent personality. You’d probably be able to discern what she’s passionate about—learn her tastes, interestes and even her favorite colors. And you’d probably get a sense of whether you’d like her or not.

She’s completely un-coached by me and it turns out that consistency isn’t by accident. “I think twice about what I post, Mom,” she confessed last week. “I don’t want to put something up there that’s so random my friends say, ‘Whoa! What’s up with her!?’ I want everyone to say “Ha! Ya, that sounds like Emily.”

So then I ask my clients whether their prospects would be able to draw the same conclusions from their own social media. Is the experience rich enough for prospects to get to know them? Is their personality showing, or are you just sharing dull information?

It can be intimidating to really be yourself in social media.  The challenge is multiplied in corporations where different people work to create a single voice across various platforms. But by defining what the brand persona is (and isn’t) and how you’re going to express it consistently, you’ll go a long way toward creating a social media brand experience that is rich, meaningful and engaging.

Getting the best work out of your creative agency is a two-way street. Neither just the client nor the agency can exert all the effort. But there are a few simple rules that can help encourage honest open communication and create a long-term, successful partnership.

• Install a spirit of partnership in the relationship. The best work can only be created in absence of fear. Lack of respect for agency’s expertise, reworking creative  and undermining the process create an atmosphere of mutual distrust and aversion. Make sure you chose an agency you admire and trust and get involved in the development process from the beginning.
• Establish clear expectations. Cooper Smith & Company believes strongly in the power of aligning marketing with business goals and objects. Share your business goals unambiguously and let your agency know what you want to accomplish. Provide all the relevant information you can about your operation, product, people and corporate culture so they can formulate a strategy that achieves optimal results.
• Give them the information they need to write an accurate brief. An agency is more effective if they are working from a clear, accurate creative brief. Provide a brief yourself, or supply the critical information necessary for them to complete the brief. In the advertising world, the less clear the brief, the more doomed the creative process is from the very beginning.
• Treat the agency people well. You are in for a very complex and inter-connected relationship and you need to do everything possible to make your agency see that they are working with you, not for you. Approaching your agency as just another vendor hinders the collaboration and disrupts the synergy. Create an environment of friendship and teamwork to get the best out of them.
• Keep the approval process simple. Limit the points of contact when it comes to approving or rejecting the campaigns. Be honest. If you don’t like something, say so. Be specific. Don’t ask for a new execution simply because this one “doesn’t work”. Great clients state precisely why they disagree, then challenge the agency to find a solution both parties can agree upon. Be kind. Think of the commentary as if you are evaluating the person.
• Establish clear paths for integration.  Set clear expectations on scope and responsibility and give them the authority they need to succeed.  Be sure they have an open and productive working relationship with partners from other disciplines if they exist. Be collaborative and share responsibility for the end result.
• Regularly schedule assessments and evaluate the progress. Having a formal assessment process is a great way to make course corrections. Develop metrics to increase accountability and put in place the means to gather the necessary and relevant data to analyze and evaluate the effectiveness of the advertising programs.
• Make sure the agency makes a fair profit. At the end of the day, both the agency and the client look for the same thing – profitable growth in their businesses. Have wide-ranging discussions to align your needs and agency interests and priorities. Set a mutually agreed upon contract that is easy to understand, simple to administer and flexible enough to accommodate possible changes in the future.

Follow these few rules, and your agency will be as committed to your success as we are to our client’s success.

It’s wrong to think that the rise of social media will make traditional marketing activities, and especially brands themselves, irrelevant any time soon. In fact, the opposite is true. Social media makes it more urgent than ever that companies deliver on a compelling brand promises or risk disappointing customers in the process.

So, with an acknowledgment to the Harvard Business Review, here are three social media web trends you should watch.

1) Connect to your customers in real-world, real-time ways

Case Study: Visitors to the Coca Cola Village Amusement Park in Israel made Coca-Cola a part of their life when they were handed RFID-enabled Facebook bracelets upon entrance to the park. The bracelets allowed guests to login into their Facebook accounts and then “like” the various attractions and recreational activities they encountered. And since “tagging” is a big feature in Facebook, bracelet wearing visitors could auto-tag uploaded images from the park’s resident photographer.

What does this mean for you?

Stop marketing products, and start cultivating customers. This campaign got people excited and involved, turning them into true “fans” by connecting with them in their physical space, not just the web space.

Engaging advertising integration is becoming so common that customers expect to interact deeply with favorite companies. They expect to have a voice in shaping the products and services they use. To foster this environment, communication must be two-way and tightly targeted at market segments.

2) Let the contest begin

Whether it’s for innovation, inspiration, or entertainment, “gamification” is here. Games provide opportunities to bring your brand promises to life by allowing you to “walk your talk”. Contests, interactive apps and web-based events also encourage your customers to interact with you and each other, encouraging two-way interaction

Case Study: In Portugal, Coca Cola created a social experiment that awarded those displaying high integrity with coveted tickets to a soccer match. The campaign reinforces Coke’s brand promises of authenticity and happiness while imparting a sense that Coke, too has high integrity.

What does this mean for you?

Gamification has the potential to connect ardent supporters with your company and brand in a way nothing else can. Because they are by nature interactive, they are never passive. Just remember to always have a meaningful point to any game and look for ways to tie in your brand promises.

3) Forget R&D, focus on E&S (Experiment and Scale)

The web allows you to test and experiment on a small scale, quickly and for much less cost than traditional research and testing. Through social media you can gain rich, unmediated customer insights, faster than ever before.

Case study: CocaCola: The #1 FB fan page. A Coca-Cola fan created this page without much of a strategy. “I sat back and watched it grow and grow and grow,” he says. Thanks to the power of the brand, the page eventually became a top page on Facebook. Coca-Cola has since made the page “official,” created some sophisticated apps, and smartly kept the creator and his buddy onboard. The result: An organic fan-centric page without a corporate feel.

http://www.facebook.com/#!/cocacola?v=wall

What does this mean for you?

Test out a few new campaign themes on your business’s Facebook friends.

Use your blog to talk about planned product or service improvements

Post a video of your new sales presentation and ask for feedback

Take a look at your marketing plan. Can you—like Coca-cola—use social media to deliver on your mission and engage your customers?

When we meet with clients they are often surprised to learn we ask so many questions.

We’ve learned that specific need usually triggers a client’s initial call. They may be looking for an updated identity, a more user focused website, or marketing to introduce a new product. But, that’s a “what”, and to create a great “what” we need to discover the “how” driving the need.

So we look for
How a client plans to grow
How they tell their story
How they interact with their customers
How they respond to market or industry pressures

Through our investigation process we frequently discover that the current need is linked to specific business goals. They indicate to us where the most effective and successful marketing solutions may be found. Sometimes they include the deliverable that triggered the call to us, but occasionally there are alternative tactics that may work better and ultimately save the client money.

So while we always work to address our client’s most pressing need, we also create plans that address their total marketing environment and their position at the current time. We look for tactics and strategies that will place them on the path for focused, strategic communications. And in the process, we ask a lot of questions!