Marketing turns us into stereotypes

Marketing turns us into stereotypes,
Literature turns us into archetypes.

Marketing Fail #76

Please stop "combining" your years of experience with your business partners' to make your company sound more experienced than it is. If you're claiming to have "over 85 years of combined experience" in any specialty whatsoever, you're not fooling anyone.

It's just bad math, and it makes you look like you're trying too hard.

Keeping It Real Green: PDF Now Available

Yep, I finally got a PDF version of Keeping It Real Green up and online:



> Click to Download <

It's begging to be expanded into a full-on e-book, so if there are additional issues or subjects you'd like to see covered, do let me know.

To read about the design thinking that went into the guide, or to order a hard copy version, go here and fill out the form at the bottom of the page.

Marketing Blog Formula No. 47

Describing how sports/current events/your latest bathroom visit is like your product/service/the marketplace.



Please, for the love of all that is good and holy, stop relying on tired old constructs to develop your blog content. I understand we're not all professional writers, and some folks need structured prompts to get inspired every once in a while (I know I do). But so many of these posts are grasping at straws, creating parallels where there are none. Worse still, such constructs don't generally lead to good writing. Because even when you've drawn a nice straight comparison between Michael Jackson's struggle for sanity and the solo entrepreneur's struggle for work-life balance, you're still left with the giant unanswered question of so what?

How do such metaphors (similes?) help your readers understand the significance of your point? Too often, they don't. What they do offer is an easy way for bloggers to keep talking about themselves, rather than anything that really matters.

So here's a quick challenge: the next time you're inclined to write your post around a comparison between some current pop culture phenomenon and your own business, take an extra minute to keep writing. Write about why anyone should care in the first place, and write about what it really means for your readers. Then go back, re-read it, edit the hell out of it, and then post it.

Roughstock Posters to be Published in "Designing for the Greater Good"

Just got the good news that two political posters I designed will be published in Peleg Top and Jonathan Cleveland's upcoming Designing for the Greater Good: The Best of Cause-Related Marketing and Nonprofit Design. I'm pretty thrilled to be included in a collection that celebrates the power graphic designers have to impact the world around us, and I'm particularly honored to be featured next to some incredible designers.





Designing for the Greater Good is scheduled to be published by Crescent Hill Books in January of 2010.

Keeping It Real Green: How to Market Your Efforts In an Age of Greenwashing

Now that green has become a marketable attribute for better or worse, everybody and their brother is pushing how green they are. And, given the general standards of our fine American culture, that means greenwashing is now just as ubiquitous. I've been watching a rather sad back-and-forth, in which more and more businesses claim they or their products are "green" and consumers roll their eyes and wag their fingers, for a while now. So when I was asked to speak on a panel about greening your business for San Francisco's Small Business Week, I figured it might be helpful to provide some guidance for attendees.

The result is "Keeping It Real Green: How to Market Your Efforts In an Age of Greenwashing," a short little piece of work written to help organizations connect with their customers without lying, misleading, or otherwise confusing the hell out of people. This is a pretty big kettle of fish to fry, of course, and it was difficult to get everything into such a compact format. But believe me, I tried! There's not a lot of fluff in here; this sucker is a legitimately informative resource for any business, however deeply involved in environmental issues it may be.

Get a free guide
Request a free copy using the contact page, or just download the PDF

The pamphlet is printed to order (no wasted overruns here) on French Paper's Speckletone, a 30% PCW recycled sheet made in the U.S. with 100% renewable hydroelectricity.

If you'd like a free copy of the pamphlet, you can request one using the contact page, or give me a call at (415) 643-0121.

I will be expanding this into a PDF, but it may take some time as I'm up to my eyeballs in content for the upcoming relaunch of re-nourish.com (another exciting project I'll talk about soon). The nice thing about the hardcopy version, though, is that you can keep it in your desk drawer for reference. Let me know what you think!

---

Edited 7/22/09: For those of you who might be concerned about my decision to create a printed piece, rather than only produce a PDF version of the guide, please see the comments. A lot of thought went into this, and I've explained that thought process to a commenter who took issue with my terrible choice.

Edited 8/3/09: The PDF has arrived! Download Keeping It Real Green while supplies last!

The Concept: Advice to Be Taken As Directed

A concept is generally considered to be the most important element of any commercial design project; designers love to throw the word around, but many are hard-pressed to actually define it. Copywriters rely on concepts as much as designers (and are often the ones responsible for developing them at the outset of a project), but are often just as much at a loss for words when asked for a definition (sad state of affairs, no?). And clients generally just look at us all blankly when we bring it up. With all this vaguery and confusion it's no wonder that solid concepts are about as rare as an honest politician these days.

A definition that actually means something

Essentially, a concept is the intellectual construct that binds the visual and verbal elements within any given design piece. Another attempt at definition, no less esoteric: a concept is the organized structuring of relevant themes that guides the visual and verbal components in a physical piece. Does that help?

"If you can't explain
it simply, you don't understand it well enough."

—Albert Einstein

If the intellectual construct is shaky - that is, if the pieces of the puzzle don't fit logically together in some way, the concept is weak and the viewer is left either confused, or simply uninterested. It's easy to create those kinds of concepts, and writers and designers churn them out every day (often encouraged by marketers, receptionists, and the boss' spouse).

But when a concept logically links the various intellectual and physical components of a design together, and manages to add a cognitive twist that stimulates the brain in some way (forcing the old a-ha, or double-take), we can reach conceptual nirvana. Or at least, we're likely to give the design more of our attention.

An example, please

Of course, this is all a lot of theoretical hooey, and like a lot of other theoretical intangibles, concepts are often subject to the "I'll know it when I see it" rule of understanding. So let's try it: I stumbled across a brilliantly concise design concept while perusing the AIGA Design Archives this weekend. This is a promotional mailer (a postcard, ostensibly, or brochure), designed in 1962, for a photography company. Ready? It's really quite subtle (or, as I like to call it, elegant):



The concept: the photography company as remedy for what ails you. This is largely a copy concept, in that the kicker - the element that provides the a-ha moment - is the tagline "To be taken as directed." The visual cues - the medicine bottle and prescription label - support this copy, but it's the copy that tells us everything we need to know about the company via the metaphor of prescriptive medicine.

This particular concept relies on a double meaning: the tagline uses a familiar phrase in medicine, to be taken as directed, and places it within a photography context, thereby adding another layer of meaning: the company's work is custom-made to order, giving the client exactly what it wants. If you've ever tried to purchase custom photography, the ability to handle art direction is fundamental; this ad speaks perfectly to its audience, using a concept that delivers the point clearly, and amusingly.

How clients can help feed concepts

Designers and copywriters don't just magically pull a solid concept out of thin air (well, the good ones can in a real pinch and for a grossly inflated sum of money). In order to produce solid concepts, creatives need information on which to build their conceptual sandcastles. This means spending time with clients before any creative work actually starts. Any number of things can trigger a good concept:

• Client personality or brand persona
• Client goals, vision, and values
  
• Audience demographics, needs, aspirations, or values
• The nature, production, and delivery of product or service offerings
• Cultural contexts and current events
• Psychedelic drugs (okay, probably not)

Designers and writers new to the trade often make the mistake of accepting what the client tells them in the first conversation, and then hitting the sketchbook. But a good creative has to ask a lot of questions first - they need to populate their mental page with lots of dots. Only when they have enough information can they create a conceptual form that makes sense; connecting the dots, as it were.

So, if you're a designer or writer: don't be afraid to ask questions. Ask strange questions. Take a ton of notes. If you're a client, of course, be willing to answer questions. Be willing to share details, tell stories, and generally spew as much information into your creative's lap as you can muster. In the end, clients and creatives share the same goal: to produce stronger work. And without a good concept, the work just won't work as hard.

Earthquake Preparedness Has Never Looked So Good

...Or been so easy to understand. The San Francisco Department of Emergency Management has done an incredible job with this infographic-based website explaining how to handle yourself in the (fairly likely) event of an earthquake. [Edited to add the real credit: I shot him because I loved him, damn him! in collaboration with asketicsf.]



The site is ultra simple, focusing on the six most common places you'll be when the Big One hits. The hilarious graphics (check out the mid-quake hair) immediately get the point across. And the copy follows suit, providing only the pertinent details, making it easier to remember, while throwing in a good dose of San Francisco attitude (when experiencing an earthquake at your local taqueria—how very relevant—you're given the choice between duck-and-cover and "grab your drink—it wasn't cheap"):



After watching the History's Channel's over-the-top-yet-nightmare-inducing look at San Francisco's earthquake history the other night, it was abundantly clear that although San Francisco's government actually has a really good earthquake preparedness plan in place, the city's residents are typically apathetic. The site does a nice job of combining design and copywriting into a short-and-sweet educational piece to break through that apathy.

(And yes, we have a run bag to keep us alive should we need it.)


[via Quipsologies]

Rethinking Paper and Ink

A great new project from Portland State University's Ooligan Press brings us Rethinking Paper and Ink, a free e-book exploring sustainable publishing. Ooligan is the university's teaching press, and as such it's using book publishing as a hands-on method for teaching students about sustainability issues, too.



The book is an enlightening read for anyone interested in the industry as a whole and/or sustainability. By taking both a broad view of sustainable book publishing (including the life cycle of a book and the various environmental impacts along the way), and more detailed look at potential best practices (including case studies), Rethinking Paper and Ink provides a thoroughly accessible framework for approaching the issues.

Given the massive impact the book publishing industry has on water and air pollution, deforestation and resource depletion, and waste processing, it's great to see students are being asked to address this stuff. It's also a really good example of how doing is often a fundamentally important part of learning (a lesson my father just recently reminded me of).

The Implications of Creative Frameworks

"For an artist, rhythm arises from the tension between regularity and irregularity, monotony and variety. Just as the predictable recurrence in pattern is a pleasure, departures from it also give pleasure, particularly when the departure has an aesthetic motive, when it adds to the 'information' we are receiving."

—Alfred Corn, The Poem's Heartbeat

It's not just pleasure we get from well-constructed rhythms (whether verbal or visual); we get meaning, too.

Guest List at Blogs.com

I was recently asked to provide a guest "Top 10" list for Blogs.com. I went ahead and provided a somewhat theoretical list of "Ten Blogs That Explore the Reality of Your Surroundings."

Rather than focus on strictly design or business blogs, I wanted to highlight some of the blogs I read that regularly make me do a double-take. Hopefully, this list will give you some good ideas, make you question some stuff you thought you had figured out, and generally provide a second look at the mundane world we walk through every day.

More Adventures in Direct Mail: SF Bike Coalition

Earlier in the week, I dissected the failings of a snail mail campaign that was sent to me by a local arts nonprofit. On that same day, I received another mailing, this time from the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, who couldn't have taken a more different approach. There was nothing particularly fancy about the envelope's presentation or contents, but it was clear that the group had invested a good deal of energy making this single mailing as effective as possible. Here's how I knew that:

• Bigger envelope means more bang for the buck.
  Although it was a standard 9" x 12" manila envelope, I knew there had to be something juicy inside to warrant such a large mailer. That thing was getting opened out of pure curiosity.
• One message, many materials.
  Turns out the mailing was intended to get my business on board with San Francisco's "Bike to Work Day." Small plugs for the SF Bike Coalition were cleverly scattered throughout the materials (including a copy of the group's newsletter), but they were all directly tied to the issue at hand: Bike to Work Day (the newsletter, for example, contained a Q&A about the event, among other BTWD features). Picking one message and reinforcing it throughout the mailing kept me from getting distracted, detached or confused.
• Appealing to your audience:
  "It is a known fact that employees who arrive at their workplace by bike are alert and productive and are generally healthier employees. Their employers reduce health insurance premiums and avoid costly employee benefit expenses like parking..."
  Overcome objections in advance.
  One of the best aspects of this mailing was the use of social marketing techniques (more on that later). From the opening of the introductory letter to the content of the newsletter, it was clear the Coalition had thought long and hard about what might prevent recipients from acting on their call for participation, and heading these objections off at the pass. The messaging was framed to address common employer concerns, including costs and employee productivity, which made it really easy to be won over.
• Provide the right incentives.
  Finally, the Coalition included a ton of materials to help its audience act on its request for participation in BTWD. Don't know the best way to implement the program among your employees? Follow the enclosed checklist. Unsure of which routes to take, or how hilly the streets are? Check out the enclosed San Francisco Bike Map. Need a way to get the word out to your employees? Post the enclosed BTWD poster. Looking for a fun team project? Take the enclosed Team Bike Challenge. Concerned about safety or getting stranded without a car? No worries, just check out the enclosed pamphlet explaining the San Francisco Emergency Ride Home program. And of course, if you want more info about the event or the Coalition itself, read the enclosed newsletter. Thinking ahead has allowed the Coalition to provide the answer to every potential question in advance, making it incredibly easy to participate.
  

These last two techniques are, as I mentioned, a significant component of social marketing (not to be confused with social media marketing, which relies on web 2.0 tools like Twitter or YouTube to spread a message). Social marketing is an incredibly effective way to encourage positive behavior change in individuals within a group context. It's a little broad to get too detailed here but the SF Bike Coalition, knowingly or not, has adopted several of its most successful principles:

1. They knew their behavior goal (employer participation in Bike to Work Day).
2. They knew their audience (employers with specific concerns about how BTWD would effect their employees health and productivity).
3. They addressed potential barriers for action (not enough information, too dangerous, too costly).
   
4. They included incentives to reinforce the behavior they were looking for (maps, team challenges, emergency rides home, posters).

Now, if they follow up with a phone call asking me if I participated, then they'll really be on point (after all, you need to measure if your campaign worked to know whether it's worth the investment). I only had two real issues with this mailing, and I have to admit they're not minor:

1. They failed to vet their mailing list (although I'm a San Francisco business, I'm not an employer), leading to a lot of wasted paper.
2. They included a lot of paperwork, much of which may get tossed.

That said, it's a relief to get a direct mail piece so thoughtfully directed to its audience. By taking all of the above into account during the design and writing stages, the group has vastly increased the likelihood of a positive response rate. The next time you send something to your constituents, I hope you'll consider these points, too.

How Not to Do Direct Mail

I just received a direct mail solicitation from a wonderful nonprofit that supports local photographers through exhibitions, education and youth mentoring. I wish so much they had taken a different approach with this mailing, because I can't imagine this one will yield the kind of response they're hoping for.

The package arrived in a standard white no. 10 business envelope. It contained a one-page letter, a semi-gloss, full-color, tri-fold brochure that unfolds into a 12" x 18" poster, and a self-addressed, unstamped reply envelope. What's so wrong with this?

• Concealing the goods.
  Why drop coin on a beautifully printed poster-sized piece, and then hide it in a nondescript envelope that makes it look like junk mail? Either gussy up the mailing container, or make the poster a self-mailer that begs to be unfolded immediately.
• Address anonymous.
  "Dear Friend" is no way to address someone when you're asking for their money. In this day and age of variable printing, there's simply no excuse. And if your marketing director doesn't know what variable printing is, you've got an even bigger problem.
  
• Not quite compelling:
  "Your membership is your ticket to a remarkable range of programs and benefits."
  So much copy, so little targeting.
  The front of this single 8.5" x 11" letter included a litany of member "benefits" directed at all kinds of different people—including artists, art lovers, collectors, and who knows who else. Simply laundry listing your organization's features and hoping readers are willing to pick and choose what matters to them is a great way to make sure nobody pays attention to anything. Pick an audience, and write exclusively to them.
  
• Features do not equal benefits.
  And here's another thing: listing what you offer doesn't explain how your audience will benefit. Don't tell me about your exclusive, members-only parties, tell me how I'll make important career connections and discover new trends before they hit the mainstream.
  
• Letterhead overload.
  I understand the desire to acknowledge a nonprofit's staff, board of directors, advisory committee, and curatorial council members, really I do. But if you're printing this on your letterhead, it means you're repeating this information with every single communication you send out. Why? It might hurt to hear, but you need to ask yourself if the reason has more to do with the staff's needs than your audience's.
  

But all this wasn't enough to turn me off and convince me not to give. No, the straw that broke the camel's back was the flip side of the letter. An entire page dedicated to a collaborative art project that I (little old me) was invited to participate in! How exciting, I thought. And all I have to do to be eligible is purchase a membership and send in my own mail art submission? I looked for the cost of membership on the accompanying brochure/poster. $50 ain't bad, considering I'd also get access to the rest of those features listed so exhaustively on the front. And that's when I noticed the deadline for submissions: May 1, 2009. Receipt date of this package? May 1, 2009.

That's right, folks. I was invited to participate in a project—a project that was supposed to sell me on donating to this organization—on the day of the submission deadline, effectively making me ineligible. That's not an oversight. It's not a mistake. It's a slap in the face to your audience.

This is not a time for this kind of ineptitude, folks. Tighten up! Don't waste your marketing dollars on what has the potential to be a highly effective campaign by not thinking it through. If you need expertise, then ask. But nonprofits can't afford to be making these kinds of mistakes right now.

Write with Intent: Written Messaging in a "Design with Intent" Framework

First, have a look at Dan Lockton's 10-minute slide show on persuasive technology and design with intent, in which he describes various methodologies used to influence user behavior:



As I continue to explore the world of social marketing et al., I've been wondering about the specific role of language in these issues. Designers focus on visual and spacial cues, obviously, and with good reason. There's a strong argument to be made for the idea that modern human language is quickly moving from a verbal core to a visual one. That's a huge debate in and of itself, best left to another post. But there can be no argument that people are becoming increasingly sophisticated information processors when it comes to visual frameworks (that is, we're getting better at deriving meaning from visual cues).

So, where does that leave verbal language? And more specifically, where does that leave the role of persuasive verbal communication? To make this more concrete: copywriters have long insisted that web copy is best served by bullet points, subheads, and other visual means of breaking up text. Shorter sentences and fewer syllables are another way we're encouraged to accommodate this shift in human information processing (since readers are now more used to simply glancing at a screen and immediately deriving meaning from what they see). But is altering the visual appearance of the words the most effective use of verbal language to communicate and persuade (and, ultimately, effect behavior change)?

Using content in addition to form

Often lost in all of this is the actual content. In the case of commercial and social marketing, content is as important an influence as form on a reader's behavior. So if we worry only about the visual appearance of text, we risk failing to provide the meaning it's intended to communicate. It's the effective communication of that meaning that causes a reader to change their attitude or, better still, their behavior. There are several ways writers can increase meaning, and therefore persuasiveness, in their messaging:

1. Avoid passive language, unnecessary modifying clauses, and jargon that may dilute the meaning of your text.
   
2. Acknowledge perceived barriers to behavior change, but emphasize the benefits.
3. Use personalized examples that reinforce the sought-after behavior change (personalized to your reader, not the writer).
4. Integrate a narrative structure that leaves the reader visualizing the process of behavior change.
   

This isn't an exhaustive list. But many of these examples find counterparts in Lockton's presentation above. Number 1, for example, could be compared to the use of unadorned, light-up reminder icons on a car dashboard (a visually active and engaging cue).

Commercial marketers have long understood this, of course (the good ones, anyway). Good social marketers understand it, too (hence the focus on addressing perceived barriers to action). But I'd love to see more academic/theoretical discussion of this within the field. Or maybe it's there and I just haven't found it yet (please point me to it, if you know that's the case). In the meantime, it would serve us marketers well to remember that form and content must work in tandem to effect real behavior change.

Social Media Innovator or Same Old Corporate Snake Oil?

There's an interesting conversation going on at the Ethicurian, who posted about Monsanto's latest foray into public coercion, a.k.a. blogging. The Ethicurian's initial post was nothing more than a short blurb noting that "the biotech giant has not only launched an ad campaign aimed at food's 'thought leaders,' it's digging into its deep pockets to fund a new Facebook presence, Twitter stream, and a blog." The interesting part? Monsanto's Social Media Director chimed in in the comments. To wit:

"The reality of it is that a small group of employees, (Yes, PR people, imagine that, communications people communicating!), who thought we should be part of the online dialog. The anti-Monsanto crowd seems to feel threatened by this. We felt it was important to start offering counterpoints to some of the more factually challenged assertions about us being spread online." (full comment)

Needless to say, the Ethicurian's readers had plenty to say back. What's so intriguing to me about this exchange is not that Monsanto is using social media in their public relations efforts (every smart corporation is these days). And it's not the content of the dialogue (are we surprised that ethical eaters hate Monsanto and Monsanto is indignant that they're hated?). No, what I find so interesting about all this is that Monsanto's PR department figures it can reframe the company by appearing human.

Chris Paton, Social Media Director for the company, is careful to dissociate himself from his company, which is odd given the purpose of his role. He frames himself as an earnest, can't-be-bought free-thinker:

"Myself and the other team members in my area who are starting to participate in the blogosphere, twitter, facebook, etc.. are doing so in addition to their regular workload. It does indeed take some man(and woman) hours to do so. Even more as we're starting to attract attention for even showing up to the discussion and the cyber-pile-on starts up. I don't dispute that Monsanto has spent a good chunk of change on the ad campaign, but I'm not responsible for that, not involved with that, and wish I had a fraction of a fraction of that budget for what I personally think is a more useful effort, engaging our critics in a dialog to see if we can't make some progress...

...I'm not an expert on every thing Monsanto may or may not have done. If I make a comment one way or another about lobbyists, funding, cow health issues, etc.. it can be torn apart by people...

...I commend you for being committed to speaking out for what you belive. I'm just disappointed that people cant belive that i'm saying what i actually believe. My paycheck doesnt buy my beliefs or my soul. If i belived that Monsanto was guilty of the things i read online on a daily basis, you couldnt pay me enough to be a part of it..."

Monsanto has been struggling with their image of a monolithic, international, bully of a corporate conglomerate for years, and their reputation among so-called ethical eaters is only getting worse as our country's food issues gain coverage in the mainstream. So it's interesting to see their public relations department using social media ("a level playing field," Chris calls it) to reframe the company's brand image. Hell, maybe they are just another group of concerned individuals working for what they believe in.

It's what they believe in that scares me so much.

(As an aside, is it too much to ask of corporate America to at least attempt a little literacy when it comes to posting online?)

Kim Rugg: Don't Mention the War

“What really interests me is how when I remove the message—the news—I am left with the messenger. The process brings this messenger to the foreground. The ‘personality’ and character of the paper is therefore amplified.”

This Is Where We Live: In a City of Books

Created for UK publisher 4th Estate, this film is utterly engrossing—at least for book nerds like myself.



This kind of time-lapse video takes infinite patience, and serious set-making skills. The video stills below show the level of detail involved in each frame (more production photos can be found on the film's site).











Cheers to Apt Studios for such incredible, meticulous work.

[Via notcot I think]

Making Sustainability Reports Work for You

As American businesses begin to feel the heat of their impact on climate change, corporate sustainability reporting has become one of the tools they use to fan the flames. Between 1997 and 2007, the number of companies producing CSR (corporate social responsibility) reports grew by more than 750%, according to Corporate Register. In real terms, just over 2,000 American companies issued reports this year alone—but who reads these things? Turns out, a new study indicates there may be some real value to issuing a sustainability report for your own organization.

Reporting Can Impact the Bottom Line—For the Better

One of the most basic findings of the study, conducted by the Global Reporting Initiative among 2,300 respondents, found that 85% of CSR report readers have a more positive opinion of the company after reading. About a third of respondents also use these reports for decision-making purposes. It would seem, then, that organizations who rely on thought leadership and increased credibility to shore up their customer base would really benefit from such reporting. I'm thinking of nonprofits, consultants and other service-based businesses in particular. But companies seeking capital funding would also stand to gain by producing reports that demonstrate their commitment to long-term sustainable strategies.

Those readers who are spurred to action after reading a company's sustainability report tend to respond with their dollars. Almost 75% of respondents say that reading a company's CSR report makes them want to either purchase the company's products or become a B2B client. That can be a potentially significant ROI, but it's dependent on a few key things:

• The report is accurate and thoughtfully produced.
• Your organization invests in distributing the report as widely as possible.
• You maximize the opportunity by directly engaging readers.

Producing a sustainability report that works for your organization

Like most projects, a sustainability report can be as straightforward or complex as you're willing to make it. But whether your report is a simple two page report or an elaborate multi-page treatise, the process needs to address the specific concerns of your readers.

Define your target audience. Reports geared toward investors will require far more statistics and detail-level information than those aimed at consumers, for example.

Gather accurate information. Knowing what standards to use, and how to accurately measure company initiatives and impact, is essential. Consider asking your audience what issues matter to them before even writing anything down, and think about how those issues dovetail with your organization's environmental and social impact on its larger communities. This will help you create a framework for content. If you skimp on this process, you risk alienating readers and undermining the whole report.

Organize information into meaningful messages. Try to balance your organization's philosophy and policy approach with real-world stories that illustrate those more abstract concepts. While the length of your report will determine just how much information you can include, you should take your cue from the framework you created in the previous step. If you have a particularly green supply chain, for example, you might outline your general purchasing policies, and also profile a specific vendor.

Engage your readers. This is where you capitalize on your report. Respondents to the GRI survey indicated that they frequently want to continue the conversation with the organization in question after reading their report. This could mean including response cards with the report itself, creating an online microsite where readers can join the conversation, or following up with a targeted campaign aimed at expanding the reporting initiative. All of these approaches give readers a specific reason to take the hand you've extended.

Towards a Truly Sustainable Strategy

If the GRI survey gives sustainability reporters cause for celebration, it also reveals a key concern: whatever reporting choices an organization makes, it must converge with an overall business strategy. Successful corporate sustainability rests on an organization's willingness to embrace entirely holistic processes; slapping together a glossy CSR brochure that trumpets your company's recycling efforts ain't gonna cut it. My recommendation is always to start with the why and the what (your organization's long-term values, approach and audience), and use reporting to communicate the how.

By treating the sustainability report as a conversation opener rather than a monologue, you have a better shot of influencing your reader and reinforcing the report's underlying message of commitment. And when your communications become a real-world tool used to engage your audience, it strengthens those relationships at a time when strong relationships can make or break a business.


Shameless Plug™: If you think your organization would benefit from some form of sustainability reporting, give me a call. We can talk about your ideas, and come up with a cost-effective solution that works for you and your audience.

Bad Habits Can Kill Your Marketing Efforts

When it comes to marketing, your problem isn't a lack of effort—even if you haven't pulled the trigger on that new website (cough), or gotten around to this year's holiday mailing. The truth is, you're marketing every day, every time you engage your customer base:

Every customer phone call and email you respond to
Every customer phone call and email you initiate
Every marketing campaign you execute
Every blog post you publish
Every forum or social networking message you post
Every time you describe what you do for a living to someone you meet
Every time you deliver a product or service to a customer
Every time you leave your business card somewhere
Every question you answer
Every payment you collect

Clearly, the problem isn't that you aren't doing enough. The real issue is that you're not putting enough thought into how you're doing these everyday things.

The Danger of Relying on Habits

When you execute the tasks above out of habit, it's easy to forget that they're actually two-sided transactions. You're delivering a message during each task, and the person on the other end is receiving that message. This is true even if you're not saying anything. Filling an order? The package the order is shipped in sends a message. The very process you've set up that your customer has to pass through sends a message—how many times they have to click through your site, how long it takes them to find your phone number, and so on. Even if you're not thinking about the message you're sending, the customer is still receiving it.

Replacing Bad Habits with Better Messages

So why do we keep perpetuating current habits? You already know: it's simply easier than identifying and transitioning into better habits. And by better habit, I mean something very specific: I mean a message that bridges the gap between speaker and listener, delivered in a way that makes it easier for the listener to understand. This is a process I'm going through myself as I redesign my now mythical website, and I really feel for organizations who are struggling with it.

Developing a thoughtful message, and then delivering it, takes deliberation. But it doesn't necessarily take pain. In fact, when you rely on a specific step-by-step process, it can be almost enjoyable (or, "a wonderful learning experience," as one of my clients once put it). The process looks something like this:

• Identify the message(s) you're currently sending
• Identify the message(s) your market wants to hear
• Take a good hard look in the mirror
• Connect the dots between what your organization provides and what your market wants
• Control each transaction so the agreed-on message gets through
• Measure the reaction to your efforts
• Adjust the messaging as much as necessary until you get it right
  

The Most Dangerous Habit of All

Obviously, developing better messaging habits takes a lot of work and a lot of insight. It can be so challenging, in fact, that most organizations end up perpetuating the worst habit of all—they skip over the discovery stages of the process and jump straight into creating new messages. If you yourself take one message away from this article, I hope it's this: don't skip the discovery.

The discovery, in which you take that good hard look at what you're doing (and what your market really wants you to do), is almost the whole point. It's the process that you've been skipping this whole time. It's what makes the habits hard to break. And if you continue to skip it, opting instead to just churn out some new marketing message based on current assumptions, you're just replacing one bad habit with another. That's a waste of time and money, and a way to miss real opportunities. So take a moment to think it all through. Research. Observe. Explore. Do it on your own, get help if you must, but do it. Because old habits die hard—but not if you kill them carefully.

Recently Read: The End of America

With America's first black president-elect comes a wave of optimism, it seems: things will be okay. But even as the public breathes this collective sigh of relief, it turns a wary eye to Barack Obama and wonders, if quietly, will things really be okay? Because the Bush administration has done real damage to America's democratic structure by limiting civil liberties, creating undemocratic "justice" systems, and otherwise desecrating our constitution. This damage is frightenly cataloged by Naomi Wolf in her 2007 book The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot.



Wolf's basic premise is simple and hard to dispute: when studying dictators throughout the world's history, there are ten patterns of behavior that emerge that contribute to their rise to power, and George W. Bush and his administration has pursued each of these steps. While never outright calling Bush and his posse a fascist dictatorship, Wolf certainly connects many dots and sounds a clear warning. Paper coups are still coups.

The Ten Steps Towards Fascist Dictatorship

1. Invoke an external and internal threat.
   Example: Terrorism
   
   
2. Establish secret prisons.
   Example: Guantánamo
   
   
3. Develop a paramilitary force.
   Example: Blackwater
   
   
4. Surveil ordinary citizens.
   Example: USA Patriot Act and TIPS
   
   
5. Infiltrate citizen's groups.
   Example: Talon and multiple state-level incidents
   
   
6. Arbitrarily detain and release citizens.
   Example: The TSA no-fly list, specific individual arrests
   
   
7. Target key individuals.
   Example: Direct Congressional pressure on academia, attorney firings
   
   
8. Restrict the press.
   Example: The outing of Valerie Plame, detainment of reporters, deliberate withholding of information
   
   
9. Cast criticism as "espionage" and dissent as "treason."
   Example: Revived use of the Espionage Act
   
   
10. Subvert the rule of law.
    Example: Military Commissions Act of 2006 (the suspension of habeous corpus), Fiscal Year 2007 Defense Authorization Bill (the gutting of posse comitatus law)
    

Wolf's arguments and examples in most cases are incredibly strong and well documented (including 14 pages of reference notes and a full bibliography). Unfortunately, there are stretches that undermine her message. She too often conflates the media (particularly the right-leaning outlets and blogosphere) with the administration itself, as when she hammers Ann Coulter for her book Treason. But these leaps become a little easier to swallow when we remember that much of Hitler's power lay in his use of ordinary citizens, as well as organized media, to further his message. Just because one's finger is not on the trigger doesn't mean they aren't responsible for the death.

That said, the book is by no means a simple comparison of Bush and Hitler. That would be too simplistic, and could be easily brushed off as left-wing rhetoric. Wolf's arguments transcend this, referencing more than just the obvious Nazi regime (who, after all, were simply better at such tactics than anyone else). Mussolini, Pinochet, Stalin and others all appear frequently to bolster her points. In fact, there are suprisingly few histrionics; Wolf spends much of her writing merely cataloging events and listing actions from different regimes side by side for the reader to compare.

While the book's premise is strongly supported by facts, it's the epistolary format and sheer number of wrongdoings that makes the book a little heavy-handed. Of course, this is the author's intention, but it would have been nice to see a few practical suggestions other than be aware, be vigilant offered to the reader. I suspect this omission is deliberate, though. Wolf's aim is to awaken, not necessarily to direct. She is asking her reader to consider the true meaning of patriot, someone who actively participates in and engages with one's civic society. And to do so, one must first pay attention.

And with chilling examples, Wolf demands our attention. In the end, it's extremely difficult to write off such examples as merely rhetoric, or such warnings as unlikely to occur. Small events become significant when placed against the backdrop of government, as when she describes a TSA agent forcing a mother to prove the substance in her baby's bottle is really breastmilk by drinking it herself: "In Benito Mussolini's era, one intimidation tactic was to force citizens to drink emetics and other liquids...Of course, baby formula is not an emetic. But a state agent—some agents are armed—forcing a citizen to ingest a liquid is a new scene in America."

When the scenes play out, and the layers are peeled back, and the dots begin to connect, what remains are nagging questions: how far does the administration have to go it before its citizens refuse to cooperate? How many democratic protections must be suspended before the public demands its rights back? How many secret armies, Blackwaters, must be formed? How many innocent citizens must be harrassed, jailed, persecuted before their peers step up in their defense? On Tuesday, we heard one answer to these questions.

So, perhaps the recent election signalled The End of America over before it began. What sense is there in rehashing the last eight years, after all, when we all want to move forward? The truth is, it would be dangerous to sit back and rest easy. The Bush administration did a lot of damage; it took an extended series of measured, deliberate steps to maintain and grow its power at the expense of the U.S. Constitution. Those changes will still be operable under the new presidency—we need to know them, to study them, to be able to roll them back.

Wolf's book is, if no longer a warning of imminent danger, at the very least a guide to serious legal issues that need to be addressed by the still-forming Obama administration. So much of the Bush administration's activities were carried out in the shadows of a disinterested, and therefore uninformed, electorate, that one can only hope that Tuesday's engagement was the mark of an extended era, and not merely an emotional hiccup. The end of America may have been delayed, but this book remains a damning documentation of how close we were, and are.

---

Whether you read the book or not, I highly recommend watching the following presentation, in which Wolf outlines her premise and presents incredible evidence to support it. A more polished version (with commercials) is also available from SnagFilms.

Studs Turkel, 1912-2008

"My epitaph is, curiosity did not kill this cat."

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

"I don't know why it was that people liked it. The only reason movies are successes is because people like them, and the only reason when they're failures is people don't like them, and everything else is mythology."

—William Goldman, writer (speaking in The Western, 2003)

Mythology is used to explain a lot these days.

Royal Type From 1936

Got my ribbons yesterday for my baby. This is what her keyboard looks like:


No #1 key, didja notice? Gotta use the lowercase L instead. But it's got fractions! There are only two real issues with this machine that I've noticed so far (aside from the fact that I need a slipmat to keep it from jogging across the table): the "w" sticks something fierce, and whatever mechanism that triggers the ribbon spool to reverse (thereby rewinding the ribbon back onto itself for reuse until dry) doesn't seem to work.

Other than that, it's all systems go.

Copywriting in Action: Inspiration from the Financial Crisis

Has the financial crisis officially jumped the shark when references to it start creeping into everyday advertising? Or is it just smart marketing to incorporate a ripped-from-the-headlines approach to one's copy? The real answer is, I suspect, that companies feel they can no longer pretend business is just business as usual. But to acknowledge the current economic turmoil or not is not even the big question of the day. The big question is: how do we acknowledge it? This week, I've had two very different approaches arrive in my inbox.

The Sincere and Concerned Approach

King Arthur Flour knows its brand. The company has been around since 1790, and has always stayed true to its core product. As the oldest flour company selling such a basic food staple, King Arthur has closely aligned itself with the notions of family values, nourishment, and responsibility. These ideals are reflected consistently throughout the company's marketing copy, whether online or off (for example, on the side of every bag of flour is printed the company's money-back guarantee—written as a letter directly from the company's president).

The latest newsletter (shown above—click the image to read the whole thing) is no exception. King Arthur has stuck with its brand identity and framed the financial crisis according to how it actually impacts its customers.

"OK, let's face it: the world is in financial turmoil...To many, it means figuring out new ways to put food on the table. And that's where we can help. King Arthur has been putting bread on American tables since 1790. Through the Civil War, the Great Depression, World War II, and countless financial downturns, King Arthur has been a steady, solid presence.

King Arthur isn't glitzy and glamorous, not the brand du jour. We're just there. Always. To help you sustain your family with good, homemade meals..."

The copy is conversational, intimate almost. It addresses the reader as a confidant. King Arthur can get away with this because of the brand it's already built that reinforces this approach. More than that, it can get away with it because all the claims are true.

The truly remarkable piece of this e-newsletter is not, however, the style or tone of the writing. The real kicker is that the e-newsletter isn't selling a single thing. In fact, it's doing the opposite—it contains a free recipe for coffee cake, and links to free services provided by the company (free baking classes, a free baking hotline, and the company's blog). This reinforces the email's message: King Arthur is a trusted friend here to help you in a time of need. Yes, we're just talking about flour. But the company has managed to remain human despite such long-running success. Perhaps that's why it's had such long-running success.

The Exploit It For All It's Worth Approach

And in the other corner, we've got an email I received the day before King Arthur sent me their offer of help. It's worth noting to start that this email was an unsolicited spam ad for an e-course on marketing. I'll never understand marketers who insist on using spam to try and sell their junk. The email amounts to a press release from two "intellectual property experts" who share a blog and are now trying to cash in on the current financial crisis.

"The same economic meltdown that is wiping out stock portfolios like a Category 5 hurricane is going to open opportunities for savvy bloggers, both entrepreneurial and corporate, to generate revenue that may have been elusive during better times. Two innovation entrepreneurs have developed a way for bloggers to learn how to thrive even when the market dives.

'These eCourses will help bloggers identify the numerous opportunities around them and embark upon a path of making money from those opportunities,' says Monroe. '...We put these eCourses together to help bloggers develop those skills and game plans so they can sail in smooth waters when many others are still in that Category 5 hurricane.'"

Let's start with the tone of the copy, which uses a hurricane metaphor (and not just any hurricane, either, but a category five hurricane) to raise alarm bells. That kind of fear-mongering is just flat-out exploitative, particularly given the significance of what's at stake for the reader. The rhyming phrases are a nice touch copy-wise ("learn how to thrive even when the market dives"), but entirely inappropriate for the subject matter. Adding levity to a crisis is one thing, but this is just belittling.

Perhaps I shouldn't be surprised by this kind of copy, given the subject matter. The pitch, after all, is written to appeal to the reader's profit motive, pure and simple. But isn't unchecked profit motive what got us into this mess in the first place? Don't get me wrong: selling a course to teach bloggers how to capitalize on the economic crisis isn't unethical in and of itself. These folks are consultants (like me, in a sense), and selling ideas is a perfectly legitimate way to make a living. But how you sell matters as much as what you sell.

These are two dramatically different approaches to acknowledging the financial crisis. Both are legitimate in their own right. The question becomes: what kind of message do you want to send to your audience? Or better still: what kind of message does your audience really want to hear?

Selling Books: Is It the Cover or the Content?

Books—specifically, literature—walk a fine line on the shelf. Ideally (or, rather, idealistically), they are works of art born of an author's need to create. But in reality, they must sell, too. Authors and their designers forever struggle with that balance:

"Her first attempt didn't work. The bookshops were absolutely uninterested in ordering stock, and she got just 19 orders after six months of trying to sell it in. 'So at the very last minute, I redesigned the cover, and it was promptly selected for three-for-two or front-of-store promotion in two major retailers. We've sold several thousand copies so far,' Barnes writes." [From When Selling Books Means Getting the Right Look]

Illustrator Sac Magique

This is some really fun work from Helsinki artist Sac Magique! Illustration skills are my weakness—I just seem to have a much better grasp of lines and and shapes when they're in letterform. But even still, sometimes when I write, I feel like this:

Design Interlude: Recent Book Cover Design

Supermarket facilities management. Sexy stuff, huh? When The Captain's step-father mentioned he was writing the best practices book for his industry, I jumped on it. The coolest thing about this book is not the chapter on "service vendor management" (shocking, I know), but the entire section on sustainability. Supermarkets are an energy-intensive industry, what with all the trucking, refrigeration and just keeping the lights on in the cold case, so it's particularly exciting to see this book call attention to it.



Now, this audience does not exactly ooze design sophistication, as noted by such lovely trade pubs as Progressive Grocer and Supermarket Today, so I couldn't exactly go trendy. Given the "how to" nature of the book, and the title, the solution was pretty clear. I designed the 160-page interior along the same lines, though the photos are lousy so you don't get to see them (you'll just have to wait for the site redesign for full shots).

The book was printed on 100% post-consumer waste recycled paper (30% PCW for the cover stock). Our printer for this job is a locally-certified Green Business, who uses only soy inks, chemical-free plates, and wind credits to power their plant. The paper stock alone saved the following natural resources:

• 5 fully grown trees
• 1,865 gallons of water
• 3 million BTUs of energy
• 215 lbs. of solid waste
• 420 lbs. of greenhouses gases

Not bad.

Copyrights and Wrongs Part 2: Starting the Copyright Conversation

This is part two of an ongoing series on copyright issues for creatives and their clients. For part one, see Copyrights and Wrongs: Getting Clients and Creatives on the Same Page.

For any communications project to get off the ground, there needs to be a contract spelling out the terms of the arrangement. Simple enough, right? But whichever side of the hiring process you’re on, you’re probably familiar with the various issues that can come up when that first draft gets passed around. This installment of Copyrights and Wrongs will focus on the early stages of this process, and how both creatives and clients can get the most out of it without feeling they have to give anything up.

In the first installment of this series, I mentioned the three underlying factors that need to be present for the process to really work:

• Both parties need to commit to keeping the process reasonable, level-headed and fair.
• Both parties need to understand the legal issues involved.
• Both parties need to retain the specific rights that will enable the success of the project itself.

Creatives who just work for a paycheck, and clients who hire based on price alone, are unlikely to fully commit to the above attitudes. But those who value creative communications for the purposes they serve and the impact they can have will quickly recognize that a mutually beneficial arrangement will elevate the quality of the work and, therefore, the power that work has in the real world. While copyright may be just one piece of the contractual puzzle, it is a fundamentally important one (as spelled out in Part One), and deserves your full attention.

Don’t Make Negotiation a Dirty Word

While you can certainly frame the copyright conversation as a contest or power trip, I've found that copyright negotiations go down much easier if you approach the whole subject as a matter of fact. Water tends to rise to its own level; a nonchalant attitude tends to keep emotions at bay, which inevitably brings objectivity to the process.

Nonchalance, however, is not the same as evasiveness; creatives should be clear about the copyright arrangement they recommend, and make sure their client understands exactly what that arrangement means. It's entirely appropriate for clients to ask plenty of clarifying questions at this stage, such as:

• Am I limited in my use of the design across other platforms (transferring a brochure onto the web, for example)?
  
• What happens if I need to reprint/reproduce the project down the road?
• What kind of files will I own (rare is the designer who includes the layered computer files, and the client needs to know this)?

Of course, creatives who have proposed a fair copyright arrangement and explained it clearly will have fewer questions to answer.

What’s Fair is Fair, For Everyone

Given the state of business today, in which there inevitably seems to be a winner and a loser in every exchange, negotiating parties almost always enter the process desperate to avoid being pushed onto that losing side. But it doesn't have to be this way; if both the creative and the client enter the process with the understanding that the relationship, to be successful, must allow for both parties to succeed in the long term, the most appropriate copyright arrangement becomes the one in which the client may use the material in the specific ways they need to, and the creative is compensated enough to remain profitable.

Both aspects of this type of arrangement may at first appear to be entirely subjective. The client may feel they should be entitled to use the work in perpetuity (forever), in whatever format they like. While this may very well be an appropriate arrangement for projects like logos, in which the purpose of the creative work is to represent the client across multiple platforms over a long time, there are several reasons why all rights language is almost always not in the best interest of either party:

1. First, the more a client uses a work—via reprints, or across multiple platforms—the greater impact the work has and, therefore, the more valuable it becomes. The designer, then, should be fairly compensated for this added value. For many projects, though, it just doesn't make sense for a client to purchase these blanket usage rights up front if there is no foreseeable need for them. Limiting the initial usage rights, then, provides the opportunity for the client to pay for additional rights when they're good and ready to (or, more importantly, when they can afford to), while the creative is paid for the fair value of the work.
   
   
2. Second, agreeing on only the usage rights the client will need in the foreseeable future gives the client a way to ensure the work will be successful for them on a limited basis, rather than investing in full rights before the work has been given a chance to...work. The creative, then, has greater incentive to produce effective work, since measurable impact is more likely to result in future work.
   
   
3. Finally, holding off on all rights language reduces the likelihood that the project—which is customized for the specific needs of the client at the time of creation—will get stale. A brochure created for a sustainability consultant, for example, will likely be ineffective and inappropriate a couple of years down the road, when the consultant’s business has grown, their services have changed, and their messaging has evolved. Why should a client pay long-range fees for a piece with a limited shelf life?

There are, of course, some situations in which all rights language is appropriate; logos, for example, require indefinite use by a business across multiple platforms. In these cases, a good client will recognize that this flexibility is worth more.

Whichever rights are ultimately agreed to, both parties should feel they have gotten what they need for their business’ long-term success. Honest and open conversation about the advantages and disadvantages to both parties is, therefore, essential.

Copyrights and Wrongs Series
Part 1: Getting Clients and Creatives on the Same Page

Images I Grew Up With: Tomi Ungerer

I am lucky to have grown up with a designer father and a reader mother; one of the first books I remember pulling down from the lower shelves as a tiny rugrat was something about architect Adolf Loos. I was hooked. I practically ate books for breakfast.

Beyond the words I took in, I'm thinking about the visual language that was taught to me back then, and how that language still knocks around inside my head—the colors, the shapes, the sheer bizarreness of the tales told in ink and paint. A lot of it was dark (which explains an awful lot about the other stuff knocking around inside my head), and a lot of it was utterly earth-shattering to my little brain.

At first I was going to just list a handful of these artists as a sort of stroll down memory lane, but I want to share too many images for a single post, so I'm doing this series-style. It only seems fair to provide some sense of the breadth of each these artists; each image, each book, builds on the next, stringing together an entire world in just two dimensions. Let's start with Tomi.

THE UNDERGROUND SKETCHBOOK OF TOMI UNGERER
This book, together with Osborn's the Vulgarians, permanently scarred me for life. I knew they were dangerous when I was reading them, long before I had any idea what they meant, just from the style of illustration. Of course, the sexually explicit imagery had something to do with it, too. The Underground Sketchbook (and other works, like The Erotoscope) seemed to channel all the cynicism and human ugliness that he left out of his children's books and even commercial advertising. Of course, that's not entirely true; his children's books did hint at the darkness and depravity of humanity but, y'know, for kids. The following few images, some of the mildest in the book, are from the copy of the Sketchbook that I permanently borrowed from my parents' bookshelf (it was published in 1964).








CHILDREN'S BOOKS: MOON MAN
Remember those individual film strip players in your grade school library? You'd check out the player at the librarian's counter, choose your film strip story (which were almost always the same selection throughout the year), and then find the furthest-away cubicle and try desperately to load the strip properly. Finally, you'd slide the cassette tape into the slot, align the strip with the sound, and off you'd go. The narrator would read a page of the book, then you'd get the beep (always too loud), and you'd roll the film strip forward one frame. This was how I read Moon Man. It always made me horribly sad to think of such a lonely, lovely figure so alienated from the world around him. Ah, childhood...




CRICTOR
And then there was Crictor, a light-hearted tale of an old woman and her hero snake.




NO KISS FOR MOTHER
I feel guilty to this day for loving this book so much (sorry, ma).






And here, finally, is the man himself:

Sense or Nonsense?

When writing marketing copy, or political reportage, or educational materials, we tend to shrink from notions of creativity and color. My motor really gets running, though, when writers actually take a risk and explore the hell out of their medium. George Saunders' recent New Yorker column is a great example:

"Sarah Palin knows a little something about God’s will, knowing God quite well, from their work together on that natural-gas pipeline, and what God wills is: Country First. And not just any country! There was a slight error on our signage. Other countries, such as that one they have in France, reading our slogan, if they can even read real words, might be all, like, “Hey, bonjour, they are saying we can put our country, France, first!” Non, non, non, France! What we are saying is, you’d better put our country first, you merde-heads, or soon there will be so much lipstick on your pit bulls it will make your berets spin!" [Full essay]

Copywriting Case Study: How to Insult Your Audience

In a clever move to win back the support of consumers, the Corn Refiners Association decided the best way to do so would be to condescend to and insult the very people it's trying to win back.



It seems the industry trade group takes issue with those of us who give a crap about the crap they try to force down our throats. Let's just break down the horrible line of thinking that led to these ads, shall we?

Step One: Identify the Problem

Like any good advocacy group would, the Corn Refiners Association recognized that their single most profitable product—high fructose corn syrup (HFCS)—is earning itself a bad name among doctors, parents, and a whole lot of other folks. First came the whispers of "why is it in everything?" including what should be unsweet food items like turkey stuffing, salad dressing and hot dogs. Then came the study that linked high fructose corn syrup to diabetes in children, which is quickly becoming an epidemic (probably because it's in, well, everything).

This is the first thing they did right, from a marketing perspective (I won't get into the first rule of ethical marketing: don't push dangerous products).

Step Two: Join the Conversation

In many cases, companies decide to just stand pat when the rumors start whirling (this approach was particularly favored in the days before the internet gave consumers so much control over brand reputation). But as the rumors about HFCS became the subject of scientific study, the CRA apparently felt it had to step in. They must have figured, "Hey, let's set the record straight!"

What they failed to admit to themselves was that the record was not exactly in their favor.

Step Three: Frame Your Message

Both of the ads the group launched hinge on the concept that facts trump "what they say" any day of the week. Not a bad approach, if you actually have facts to back up your argument. But the ads fail to deliver on this promise, opting instead to bolster several fallacies with facts that are rather inconsequential.

Claim: HFCS is made from corn.
Truth: Yup. (Of course, I don't really want corn in my toothpaste.)

Claim: HFCS has the same calories as sugar.
Truth: Basically, yup.

Claim: HFCS is fine in moderation.
Truth: Possibly true but misleading. Americans' consumption of HFCS has increased 250% over the last 15 years (source), because it's in damn near everything; CRA member companies shipped 23,503,847,000 pounds of HFCS in 2005 alone (source). So when they tell us to consume it in moderation, it's a little bit like waiving a vial of crack in front of a junkie and then telling him to go home. HFCS has also been linked, as mentioned, to diabetes because it messes with the way the body produces natural regulators.

Claim: HFCS doesn't have any artificial ingredients.
Truth: Not exactly true, and definitely misleading. There are synthetic ingredients used in the processing of HFCS (corn starch hydrolysate and glucose isomerase enzyme preparation, to be exact), but the molecular structure of these substances are altered during manufacturing. Furthermore, the FDA itself (notoriously loose when it comes to limiting Big Business claims) does not allow companies to call products containing HFCS "natural" (source).

So if you're going to frame your message around facts, you better have good ones to support it.

Step Four: Imply Your Audience is Stupid to be so Easily Swayed By Empty Words, then ask them to believe yours

This is where the copywriting really falls apart. Setting aside the giant conceptual mistake of fact vs. fiction, it is generally a bad idea to portray your audience as being either a dumb sheep or a passive-aggressive, judgmental bitchface. Do the writers even realize that the white mother in the ad above represents the very people they are trying to persuade? She's expressing what the public is thinking—why on earth make her look like such a snot while doing it? Making your audience feel bad about themselves—or worse, self-defensive—is a terrible way to get them to do what you want.

The Lesson: Consider the person receiving your message and be nice to them

Mending a broken relationship with your customer base is no easy task. I can't say I envy the marketing minds behind these ads, given the uphill battle they've been tasked to fight. I'm not even sure I know what approach would work for them at this point. I do know, though, that winning over a naysayer requires a delicate touch. Making your audience look like a douchebag, then asking them to support you? Not so delicate.

Copyrights and Wrongs Part 1: Getting Clients and Creatives on the Same Page

Copyright law might be one of the most misunderstood areas of creative services, representing a giant hole of knowledge for both the creative and the client. Yet it's a fundamentally important element of the hiring process and as such, needs to be addressed. When it's not, both parties are far more likely to make assumptions that may come back to haunt them legally (and financially). If you're going to hire a creative studio (or if you work for, or run, one), you need to know how copyright works.

Please note that I am not a lawyer. If you are a lawyer, please feel free to add clarifications in the comments. There are also additional references at the end of this post for further reading.

What is copyright?

Copyright, at its simplest, is just a form of legal protection for a person's intellectual property. The definition of intellectual property, of course, can get very broad and fuzzy—how, for example, can black-and-white laws be applied to intangible concepts and ideas? Copyright attempts to address this dilemma by covering only "original works of authorship fixed in a tangible medium of expression." In plain English: copyright law covers an idea in its tangible form.

Copyright is a set of laws, and the set consists of two primary elements:

• Ownership Rights
  Ownership automatically belongs to the author of the work as soon as the work is produced. The copyright owner is the only party who can claim authorship of the work, and is the only party who can dictate usage rights.
  
  
• Usage Rights
  Usage rights encompass a whole set of individual rights dictating how the work may be used: the right to reproduce the work, the right to display the work, the right to modify the work or make derivative versions, and several others.
  

So what, exactly, is being copyrighted?

I've heard countless complaints from designers who discover that the brochure they created for their client has been appropriated for use on the client's website—without permission. And from writers who find the article they wrote for a print magazine has been posted online—without additional pay. These issues often stem from a client who doesn't understand the difference between the file they're receiving and the work contained in that file.

When a client pays for a creative work, they often assume that they're purchasing the whole creative work, and not the individual licensing of it. So they get the file, and figure they can use it whenever and however they want. They can cut and paste, rearrange it, use pieces of it elsewhere. But unless there's a signed contract explicitly granting the client either ownership rights, unlimited usage rights, or rights to modify the work, the client may not do these things.

Remember: unless the contract explicitly states otherwise, the creative work is not being sold in the transaction—the rights to use it are. So, when you get a file, you can use that file exactly how the contract stipulates and no more.

Addressing copyright in the contract

When an original work is created, the entire copyright (including both ownership and all forms of usage rights) automatically belongs to the creator of the work, whether or not the creator actually registers the work with the U.S. Copyright Office. The creator can only lose these rights if s/he signs them away to another party. This is typically done by written contract, and it's the only way to ensure both parties are protected.

Signing away ownership rights to a work is a controversial decision among creatives, since this means the author no longer has any legal right to claim authorship ("I made that"), or to display the work at all, including to promote oneself. This is a significant enough issue that I'll be addressing it in more detail in an upcoming post about work for hire agreements. Suffice it to say, it is in the creative's best interest to hang onto copyright ownership of any work created. That it's in the creative's best interest, however, does not mean that the client gets slighted in this situation. Clients commonly misunderstand copyright law, assuming that they must have ownership rights in order to successfully use the work they've commissioned. But this isn't necessarily the case.

Because usage rights can be bundled in any number of ways, and can be as limited or broad in scope as the parties agree to, they are extremely flexible—which is why clients and creatives should focus the bulk of their negotiations here. Usage rights can limit reproduction to a geographical area, for example, or can allow for the display of the work both online and in print. This flexibility is extremely favorable to both client and creative—reaching a mutually beneficial arrangement becomes a matter of both parties being willing to recognize the needs of the other, and expand or limit the bundle of usage rights accordingly.

Reaching a mutually beneficial arrangement

I use this phrase—mutually beneficial arrangement—a lot. It's the cornerstone of what I do and what I believe. My business operates under the assumption that all parties involved (that's me, my client, and everyone else impacted directly or indirectly by the work we produce together) need not get the short end of the stick when it comes to fair treatment. Many businesses operate using a very different principle; I've turned away several potentially profitable clients who believe that for one party to succeed, the other has to sacrifice.

To ensure successful copyright negotiations, several things need to happen in the following order:

1. Both parties need to commit to keeping the process reasonable, level-headed and fair.
2. Both parties need to understand the legal issues involved.
3. Both parties need to retain the specific rights that will enable the success of the project itself.
   

Each of these steps brings with it its own hurdles, of course. But by committing to them, creatives and their clients will together get through what can otherwise be a cantankerous, tedious, or simply ignored process. It also happens to lay an important foundation for the success of any creative project.



Further Reading:
US Copyright Office
AIGA's Guide to Copyright (PDF download)
AIGA's Standard Form of Agreement for Design Services (PDF download)
Poynter Online's massive list of copyright resources

Copyrights and Wrongs Series
Part 2: Starting the Copyright Conversation

Copyrights and Wrongs Part 2: Starting the Copyright Conversation

This is part two of an ongoing series on copyright issues for creatives and their clients. For part one, see Copyrights and Wrongs: Getting Clients and Creatives on the Same Page.


For any communications project to get off the ground, there needs to be a contract spelling out the terms of the arrangement. Simple enough, right? But whichever side of the hiring process you're on, you're probably familiar with the various issues that can come up when that first draft gets passed around. This installment of Copyrights and Wrongs will focus on the early stages of this process, and how both creatives and clients can get the most out of it without feeling they have to give anything up.

In the first installment of this series, I mentioned the three underlying factors that need to be present for the process to really work:

• Both parties need to commit to keeping the process reasonable, level-headed and fair.
• Both parties need to understand the legal issues involved.
• Both parties need to retain the specific rights that will enable the success of the project itself.

Creatives who just work for a paycheck, and clients who hire based on price alone, are unlikely to fully commit to the above attitudes. But those who value creative communications for the purposes they serve and the impact they can have will quickly recognize that a mutually beneficial arrangement will elevate the quality of the work and, therefore, the power that work has in the real world. While copyright may be just one piece of the contractual puzzle, it is a fundamentally important one (as spelled out in Part One), and deserves your full attention.

Don't Make Negotiation a Dirty Word

While you can certainly frame the copyright conversation as a contest or power trip, I've found that copyright negotiations go down much easier if you approach the whole subject as a matter of fact. Water tends to rise to its own level; a nonchalant attitude tends to keep emotions at bay, which inevitably brings objectivity to the process.

Nonchalance, however, is not the same as evasiveness; creatives should be clear about the copyright arrangement they recommend, and make sure their client understands exactly what that arrangement means. It's entirely appropriate for clients to ask plenty of clarifying questions at this stage, such as:

• Am I limited in my use of the design across other platforms (transferring a brochure onto the web, for example)?
  
• What happens if I need to reprint/reproduce the project down the road?
• What kind of files will I own? (Rare is the designer who includes the layered computer files, and the client needs to know this.)

If, as a creative, you're not hearing these questions, it might be wise to address them anyway. Because creatives who propose a fair copyright arrangement and explain it clearly from the get-go are likely to run into fewer problems later.

What's Fair is Fair, For Everyone

Given the state of business today, in which there inevitably seems to be a winner and a loser in every exchange, negotiating parties almost always enter the process desperate to avoid being pushed onto that losing side. But it doesn't have to be this way; if both the creative and the client enter the process with the understanding that the relationship, to be successful, must allow for both parties to succeed in the long term, the most appropriate copyright arrangement becomes the one in which the client may use the material in the specific ways they need to, and the creative is compensated enough to remain profitable.

Both aspects of this type of arrangement may at first appear to be entirely subjective. The client may feel they should be entitled to use the work in perpetuity (forever), in whatever format they like. While this may very well be an appropriate arrangement for projects like logos, in which the purpose of the creative work is to represent the client across multiple platforms over a long time, there are several reasons why all rights language is almost always not in the best interest of either party:

1. First, the more a client uses a work—via reprints, or across multiple platforms—the greater impact the work has and, therefore, the more valuable it becomes. The designer, then, should be fairly compensated for this added value. For many projects, though, it just doesn't make sense for a client to purchase these blanket usage rights up front if there is no foreseeable need for them. Limiting the initial usage rights, then, provides the opportunity for the client to pay for additional rights when they're good and ready to (or, more importantly, when they can afford to), while the creative is paid for the fair value of the work.
   
   
2. Second, agreeing on only the usage rights the client will need in the foreseeable future gives the client a way to ensure the work will be successful for them on a limited basis, rather than investing in full rights before the work has been given a chance to...work. The creative, then, has greater incentive to produce effective work, since measurable impact is more likely to result in future work.
   
   
3. Finally, holding off on all rights language reduces the likelihood that the project—which is customized for the specific needs of the client at the time of creation—will outlive its efficacy. A brochure created for a sustainability consultant, for example, will likely be ineffective and inappropriate a couple of years down the road, when the consultant's business has grown, their services have changed, and their messaging has evolved. Why should a client pay long-range fees for a piece with a limited shelf life?

There are, of course, some situations in which all rights language is appropriate; logos, for example, require indefinite use by a business across multiple platforms. In these cases, a good client will recognize that this flexibility is worth more.

Whichever rights are ultimately agreed to, both parties should feel they have gotten what they need for their business' long-term success. Honest and open conversation about the advantages and disadvantages to both parties is, therefore, essential.

Copyrights and Wrongs Series

Part 1: Getting Clients and Creatives on the Same Page