Your Business Card is CRAP!

"Infotainer" Joel Bauer lays it out for us. Hope you enjoy this kind of humor.

Day at the DMV

In my State of North Carolina, the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) is notorious for it's bad customer service. Having lived in the state for a few years, I've developed a strategy for surviving the bureaucracy.

Even after arriving early on a "slow day," Tuesday morning (notably not Monday or Friday), there was already a line snaking outside. Once you reach the inside of the building, you wait in another queue, actually more like a coral. Everything is faded—walls, floors, old dog-eared posters. Even the demeanor of the workers show every lack of enthusiasm. The walls are plastered with signs on what not to do: No Smoking, No Cellphones, No Public Restrooms. There were also reminders that only cash and North Carolina checks were valid forms of payment.

Once you reach the counter, a DMV employee gives you a ticket with a sequence letter/number combination—mine was A111. Next, I sat down in a second holding tank—having luckily found a seat, and waited for my number to be called. Once a number is announced over the loudspeaker, it is repeated incessantly until the "customer" arrives at the designated desk.

Number B113 had to be called half a dozen times. I was having a hard time concentrating on my book, with the repeated barking of letters and numbers. I was reading the book, Emotional Branding, by Marc Gobé. He believes we live in a consumer-oriented marketplace, where brands need to connect with the customers on an emotional level in order to be effective. Ironically the only emotion I was feeling about the DMV was annoyance. After my number was called, I took a small drivers license road sign recognition test, and took a seat in yet another waiting room.

When the uniformed DMV employee called me up to get my picture taken, he told me to sit down on a stool against a wall. Lights came on for what seemed a long time. There was no warning when the picture was being taken, no smile for the camera—it was just, "You're done. Please have a seat back in the waiting room."

A few minutes later this same employee handed me a newly printed drivers license to inspect for accuracy. Well, the name was right, but the picture was of a guy I hardly recognized, with a strange, half-smile. It was obvious he didn't know when the shutter was being released.

"Can I take the picture again?" I asked. "If you want to retake it, you have to go stand in that line." The man motioned over to the desk and holding tank I had just come from.

"No thanks," I said. Great, now I have to live with a license picture I hate for the next eight years! I think I'm starting to feel the emotion of anger.

Even though I was only able to read a few pages in my book, I learned a lot today.

A lot about customer care. A lot about what not to do.

Thinking Inside the Box

You hear the phrase "think outside the box" all the time. I know what people mean when they say that. They mean, "come up with something innovative and different."

While it's a good idea to innovate, when it comes to design, I don't think it's helpful to abandon the box altogether. In my opinion, the best design happens when there are parameters (or boundaries) present that give the creative process some direction. Otherwise, if there are no boundaries, the final design can be confusing and unnecessarily risky.

A better question to ask, would be, "do we have the right box?" Do we have the right strategy? 

In this scenario, brand strategy is the box which informs the design.

Putting the Brakes on Pontiac

General Motors has announced it is phasing out the Pontiac line. It's too bad. Pontiac started the American muscle car trend in 1964 with it's GTO. Unfortunately, it's the same company that also brought us the Aztek, arguable one of the ugliest cars ever made. Not exactly your "excitement dealer."

Recently they've come out with the Pontiac G8, a rear-wheel drive, hot looking, performer. But it seems to be too little, too late. There's just way to much competition from other well-crafted brands. Pontiac has squandered away it's brand by sending us too many mixed messages. We're a cost-effective performance brand ... no, we're a place to rebadge boring GM cars.

Kevin Smith, editorial director from the automotive website edmunds.com puts it best: "There was a time, a long way back now, when you knew exactly what Pontiac stood for ... [unfortunately] Pontiac's lack of focus as a brand may finally have brought its demise. That's just death in a marketplace where there's so much competition and so much quality."

For years, General Motors has been trying to convince us through millions of advertising dollars that Pontiac is an exciting line of cars. Unfortunately they forgot to check with the customers to see if we really believed the hype.

A Great Name

It's been said, "A good name is more desirable than great riches" (Book of Proverbs). I firmly believe that. While a company reputation means a lot, having a good name can help move a company into a more competitive position.

Of course there are many businesses who do well despite being saddled with a poor name. The regional bank BB&T, though successful, in my opinion has a confusing name. Most people don't know that it stands for Branch Banking & Trust. The acronym BB&T could stand for anything, and Branch Banking & Trust is too generic to be memorable.

On the other hand, the smaller regional financial institution, Bank of Granite has a great name. It has meaning on several levels. When I think of granite, I think of something rock solid. In my mind I envision a granite encased vault inside the bank. My money is safe and secure with this bank.

Good company names are memorable and often have double meanings or invoke the right imagery. Poor names are confusing and generic.

A good name for a plastic surgery clinic: Genesis Anti-Aging & Cosmetic Surgery 

Poor name: Piedmont Plastic Surgery

When I think of Genesis, I think of new beginnings, when I think of Piedmont, I think of a region in North Carolina. What does that have to do with physical beauty? Also there's plenty of Piedmont companies out there: Piedmont Manufacturing, Piedmont Painting, etc. In the final logo, Piedmont Plastic Surgery had to compensate for the poor name by coming up with an elegant swan illustration to precede the name.

Upstream is the name of a high-end seafood restaurant in the Charlotte area. It's a wonderful label, since it has levels of meaning: upscale plus the imagery of stream, perfect for a fish & seafood restaurant.

In my experience working with business people, I have observed that many form their company names with their own initials—JCB Accounting, RTL Capital. That may mean something to the owner, but the customers are left with a company name that has little meaning to them.

When launching a company, it's so important to get the name right from the start. It can be changed later, but why go through all that hassle and expense? It's better to start out strong in people's minds. Here's the bottom line:

Memorable and levels of meaning—good. Confusing and generic—bad. 

What is a Brand?

There are a lot of opinions and misconceptions out there on what actually constitutes a brand. A lot of people think that a brand is a product label, like Land O' Lakes butter—or if you prefer, the fancy stuff from the gourmet grocer, Plugrá. Some disregard the labels all together and go with generic butter, treating the product like a commodity. While we refer to product labels as brands, I think it's an incomplete picture.

Another idea is that the logo itself is the brand. The Harley-Davidson Motor Company has a very recognizable word mark/crest. In reality the logo itself is not the brand, but it represents the open road, freedom, American-born, bad-boy attitude that even a middle aged tax accountant can achieve.

Here's what I think is the best definition of the concept of brand. It's not original with me, but from California brand-guru Marty Neumeier from his book Brand Gap:

"A brand is a person's gut feeling about a product, service, or company. It's not what YOU say it is. It's what THEY say it is."

"THEY" being the customer, this definition puts the essence of your brand firmly in the customer's hands. We can nurture our "brands" by having solid and honest identity design, compelling ad campaigns and a corporate climate that lines up with that impression. We can be as smart as we want, but we still can't assume we know everything about our brand. We need to trust our customers in this experience-driven economy to show us the way. Our customer's opinion is key.