To-Do List-itis

The last postcard in our campaign. It isn’t really about marketing. But if you’ll allow me, it’s about more than business. In his classic documentary, “Running Out of Time,” Robert Krulwich explores “The paradox of modern life … that we have more labor-saving devices but less free time.” That “in Japan, karoshi (“death from overwork”) is accepted as a valid cause of fatalities among middle-aged men” and the irony that the people in wealthiest nation on earth take two weeks of vacation, “contrasted with those in Europe, where 5-6 weeks of vacation per year are common.”

It’s about a philosophy. As a cancer survivor, as a survivor of sliding off I-94 at 70mph into a snow-filled ditch with my daughter, as a survivor of the 60’s, recessions, depressions, orphaned and grandfathered, I believe life is precious and short. I believe we are lucky to work in the creative arts – a field of great mirth and joy – with co-workers and clients who smile (you can even sign up for our humorgram!). We, at Sinard, try to bring some of that joy to every project, every day.

And so, while it is a false promise to suggest that your vacation time will increase, your blood pressure will go down and you’ll have more free time if you work with us, perhaps one of these things will happen, if just a little. At very least, you’ll know your to-do list will be in the trusted hands of world’s only Licensed Social Media Therapists!

For more about our newly-concluded “Fear of” campaign, featuring Blogophobia, Facebookitis and the rest, go to www.sinard.com/treatment.

Dissociative Catalog Identity Disorder

We make both kinds of catalogs: gorgeous print catalogs (go to your nearest Rainbow Play Systems dealer and pick one up!), and equally gorgeous and effective websites, including eCommerce sites with thousands of SKU’s.

They are not the same. Where we put tremendous thought and effort into the style, look and feel of a print catalog, that becomes the point of departure for the web version.

Layout/Design

Print projects can be created in a huge variety of sizes, but that size is determined at the outset by the designer (on advice from sales, marketing and consumers). Once printed, it won’t change: what’s designed is exactly what the customer sees. Web designers, on the other hand, have no control over what sort of monitor people are going to be viewing on. 1280 x 1024? Smaller? Larger? iPhone? 960? Wider? Will the screen tend toward blue? Green? Red? This is much closer to Television design, where students were taught to memorize the National Television Standards Commission standards (NTSC) with the pneumonic: “Never Twice the Same Color.”

Ecommerce Usability

Ecommerce design is at the mercy of a thousand technological and usability contingencies which need to be factored in before the first graphic is made.  And of course, since websites are active, we have an extra metric – time. If you want your ecommerce site to have a full page Black Friday graphic, make sure you tell your designer when he’s making wireframes in April.

Interactivity

In a print catalog, information design is all about optimizing a classic linear form – table of contents up front, content in a straight-forward order, index, the end. But with a website linearity is out the window. Your customer may want to learn about ice cream by flavor, calories, size, location … multiple entry-points give prospects the way they prefer to get to information they deem critical. Managing and designing information in a way that gives viewers constant, clear, opportune options is the most difficult part of web design. Your prospect will give you only moments to orient themselves before they type in your competitor’s URL.

Creating your ecommerce site with an understanding of how people search allows for immediate client satisfaction, minimal frustration, and maximizes the sales funnel effect – the information channel which leads from the homepage to the Buy button. Because unlike a print catalog, which at best refers you to a website or phone number, your website should be making sales.

If you’re a very small company that has simply moved your print catalog online as a pdf, we can help. We have a friend who put his entire several-hundred page catalog on the web — as is — with “page-turn” effects. He’s gone through marketing media therapy. His sales are better now.

Dulliosis

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Everything said above about catalogs must be applied to the website as a whole. But it is true that the most focus goes to the homepage, and the design that flows from it. There are many studies showing how people react to various layouts and designs – what works, what doesn’t. All newspapers have headlines and columns. The familiarity makes for ease-of-use.

But familiar doesn’t have to be “foolishly consistent,” ie., dull. Far too many sites are, in another word, staid. Now especially, as the worlds of computer monitors and TVs merge, motion media, such as animation and short-short videos, are more important than ever. Video remains the most effective, powerful medium in current use. Slide shows are better than nothing, but too many people that should really have meaningful motion, don’t.

That doesn’t mean you have to turn your homepage into something like the “The Daily Prophet” in Harry Potter (although that would be cool). There is rich, fertile ground between Google’s homepage and Avatar. But should you be that person who wants to be the artist, iconoclast, eccentric or maverick, we could make your site round, or triangle, or voice-controlled.

Or not. Because in communications there is something called the “bandwagon effect.” In art, the same flaw is called “derivative.” That is to say, there’s nothing wrong with your design following conventional standards – because they work for most people.

In either case, be you innovator or not, if you or someone you love has Dulliosis, Dissociative Catalog Identity Disorder, or other Social Media Malady, call us. After all, as “the world’s only Licensed Social Media Therapists”, it is our duty to keep our public informed!

For more about the “Fear of” campaign, featuring Blogophobia, Facebookitis and the rest (appearing weekly 9/27 – 11//15) go to www.sinard.com/treatment

Whether it’s on a DVD, TV or the web, when you put out that brand new video, the last thing you want is your audience thinking: “This looks cheap.” “My kid could make that.” “What are they even selling?” “I don’t get it.”

What you want your audience to think is, “I’m going to forward this to all my friends.”

What they want…  isn’t.

These two extremes – under-producing with lack of concept and over-producing with too much concept – might seem like two very different problems, but what they both share is a disconnection with their audience; usually based on a miscalculation about what people want.

When you’re coming up with a new campaign, the question always is, “what will my prospect/client/audience respond to?” And you always think of the wants first. Your audience wants something from you.

• Testimonials from satisfied customers
• Demonstrations that prove the product
• Pricing that competes with the other brands
• How-tos that make it look easy
• a 30-minute talking head from the Chief Engineer in front of jungle wallpaper (okay, we established they don’t want that)

And the list goes on.

What they really want are benefits, trust, confidence – a combination of rational and emotional appeals. What you want is to promote your brand, your differentiation, your product! You find success where the two intersect.

But don’t just take it from us. All one really needs to know about marketing strategy is this: “the most important characteristic of creative and effective advertising [is] that it [elicits] positive feelings in the viewer related to their self-image.”*

In other words, it’s an emotional response that makes a new customer. Sure, you need to put up the web address and the introductory price and the closest dealer, but none of those are going to matter unless you make your audience feel something.

Here’s a quick quiz. Taco Bell experienced double-digit growth as a result of a campaign featuring:

• A massive, nation-wide sale
• Gorgeous images of their tantalizing offerings
• A talking Chihuahua with a Mexican accent

Maybe that was a fluke. Let’s try another one. Taco John’s experienced double-digit growth as a result of a campaign featuring:

• A massive, nation-wide sale
• Gorgeous images of their tantalizing offerings
• A monkey riding a dog delivering burritos

What do dogs and monkeys have to do with tacos? Nothing (except that they’ll both eat them, in a pinch). But the ads were funny and different and cute. People loved them. And sales went up – double digits.

But enough about tacos.

So you want to make a video that sticks with people. What should it look like? Where does it go? And how much does it cost? With 30 years experience in award-winning production, we could write a book (and maybe we should!). Of course, creating a concept that’s going to deliver that emotional hook to an audience is going to be different for every client, but if you look at the viral video phenomenon you’ll notice a few trends. People tend to have strong reactions to videos that show one of four things: Something incredibly funny, amazing, cute, or awful. Most of you won’t be interested in the Awful category, but the other three qualities are what you find in the videos that really make the rounds. These are qualities that inspire emotional reactions. So whether you’re looking to simply step up your commercial game or aiming to make the next Will It Blend?, your first brainstorming session has got to plan ahead for the watercooler conversation.

If you think you or someone you love is suffering from symptoms of Videoitis or another Marketing Malady, get in touch, or follow along as we continue examining Media Maladies during our campaign over the next few weeks.

What’s changing?

Starting on July 1st of this year, any code that touches a credit card must be PCI compliant – not only compliant, but certified as compliant.

Until recently, not storing credit cards, encrypting credit card information (through a secure certificate) and sending the information directly to a Gateway such as Authorize.net for final processing has been regarded as a secure setup. As of July 1st, though, the requirement now includes the security of your shopping cart.

Your shopping cart must be certified as PCI compliant, or you have to find another way of processing credit cards. And the list of certified carts is very short – chances are your cart isn’t on the list. Check the PCI Security Standards Council site (filter by application type: Shopping Cart).

What’s the solution if your cart isn’t compliant?

You can check with the provider and see if they plan on obtaining certification soon. But if you’re a small to medium-size business using an inexpensive or open-source cart, they probably won’t be. Certification is prohibitively expensive for most small cart providers.

The safest and probably cheapest solution is to change your payment processing. You can keep your current cart, but change where the credit card information is collected – outsource that part of the process.

Be sure to look for payment processors that are themselves compliant – that information should be on their site. Paypal is a well-known solution that’s PCI compliant. Another alternative is Authorize.net. Since Authorize.net is one of the most used gateways, there’s a good chance that you’re already using it. If you’re now collecting the credit card information on your site and sending it to Authorize.net, you can have a programmer switch you to Authorize.net’s server integration method (SIM). With this method, all the credit card information is taken at the Authorize.net site, so they’re responsible for security.

What else do you need to do?

Figure out what merchant level applies to you – Visa’s site has a clear listing.

Then follow the requirements for your level. Small merchants (< 20,000 transactions), for example, need to fill out the self-assessment questionnaire -  and may or may not need quarterly security scans. Check with your merchant bank for specific requirements.

You also need to provide security for credit card numbers you take over the phone or in person.

What are the consequences of non-compliance?

Your merchant bank could decide not to let you process credit cards. If you should happen to experience a security breach (stolen credit card number), the credit card company fines could put you out of business. They range from $2000 a day until you’re compliant to $500,000 for a single incident.

A note about our suggestions

There are other ways of dealing with the compliance issue. If your host has great security, you may be able to pass a scan even if your cart isn’t compliant. But as Trust-Guard notes, “it’s important to keep in mind that no matter what your acquirer does or does not recommend that you do in order to be PCI DSS compliant, you could still be financially responsible if something happened.” I.e. if there were a security breach with your host between security scans and credit cards were stolen, you might be fined. We don’t like the uncertainty, so we’re recommending a method that protects against that possibility. You could also switch carts, but that’s likely to be a more expensive solution than changing your processing.

Thinking outside the box means thinking outside traditional normatives and mores. But normatives and mores are the building blocks for shared communication. They are our way of thinking and behaving. By living inside the borders (created by the the famous “nine dots” puzzle) we are safe and comfortable. To go beyond their borders means “art.” No more, no less. And I include scientific discovery and prophesy in that realm.*

Connect all the dots using four lines, without lifting the pen off the paper. Hint: Think outside the box.

In other words, truly thinking outside the box means Picasso, John Cage, Trio-X, and every 100th student at MIT and CalArts. Being outside the box is strange, unusual, weird, uncanny, awful, smelly, messy and unique. It can also be fantastic, glorious, transcendent – and quite scary and lonely. We know. We’ve been there.**

What most trainers and marketers usually really want is derivative thinking.

Derivatives are not merely instruments of unethical financial behavior. They are based on well-known social conventions, such as TV shows. When BMW commissioned a video for webcast, it is a derivative of broadcast moved to the new medium. Placing videos on YouTube is a synthesis of TV and Americans Funniest Home Movies. These ideas are new, refreshing, fun and not outside the box.

Which is why advertisers long-ago coined the term “edgy,” with, perhaps, an unconscious nod to “the box.” Being “on the edge” can be a metaphor for many potential changes – from emotionally explosive to physical danger. But “edgy” is most often used in ad lingo to describe, I submit, that border between derivative and the truly unique – that which is “outside the box.”

The truly unique

Why should you care? The truly unique is ground-breaking; it evokes an emotional response, sometimes a physical reaction, and occasionally provokes actual thought. Thought, of course, is often unwelcome, and is unnecessary in the Attention stage of adoption-diffusion and advertising. But if the emotion is strong enough – especially if it is positive – it can push a clients brand into instant recognition, and prospects scurrying to discover more.

Being outside the box isn’t for everyone, and deciding how far to go outside the box is fraught with second-guessing. So if you’re thinking of going there, call us for a tour. It’s where we work on many days, before we drive home in our solar powered cars to our cubist homes and minimalist pets.
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*Great authors on the subject include C.P. Snow and Dr. Rudolf Arnheim.

*Sinard has been a consistent early adapter of new – outrageously new, and often unique – technology and art. We were amongst the first to use a new technology called videography in 1970; “interactive” in 1984; digital video editing in 1987; Sandin Image processing in 1990, and Portable Domes in 1997. Have you seen our interactive surfaces and environmental objects?

[Note: My thought process goes something like this: my friends at the Art Institute of Chicago and Circle Campus had fabric, roll-up keyboards attached to their Bally computers (with audio cassette drives (really)) in the 1970s. Why would I buy an ultra-modern computer unable to connect to peripherals in the 21st century? Sorry, not me.}

What Does This Mean for Your Marketing Efforts?

But reasons and specific features aside, what does this example mean to your product, your service, your marketing efforts? Well, soon to be out-of-date, tech example aside, this is an example of where AIDA, Adoption-Diffusion, Social Media, Marketing and Operations meet.

Obviously Apple spent the ad dollars to garner everyone's attention, and posted enough information for me to make a decision. AIDA is satisfied. But Adoption-Diffusion is different. Always a bell curve, Innovators, Early Adopters, Middle and Late Adopters and Laggards choose based on perceived needs. Until Operations makes changes to the product, I will be a laggard.

This is undoubtedly a deliberate decision by Apple. Someone at Apple decided: we have a good enough product for this launch; we don't need those people who require more; we'll get them later, if ever.

But what if they were wrong (and for serious salespeople and business professionals, they might be!)? What if the vast majority of us wanted the ability to hook up peripherals? The Palm Pre is planning it. Blackberry can do it now. How would you know how important a feature set might be to your prospects, ahead of time?

New Approaches to Market Research

Market research. Pure, fundamental focus groups, questionnaires and client/user-group input. But also, what if you were to use social media to research your product before launch? I'm not saying Apple would have given the iPhone peripheral connectivity if they had adopted Twitter. But what if you used your Facebook and Twitter accounts to build an international support group, and create a [the name of your developing product/service here] Wiki, especially in the early design and marketing development stages? What input would you get from various communities with interest in your product development?

Of course, your competitors would love to be part of your social media community as well. But there are ways to deal with that. The point is, there’s more to Twitter than Twits, more to Facebook than pretty Faces. Collaboration can be a powerful tool – if and when used judiciously. Doing so in 2008 would have been innovative. In 2009, using social media for product research is still ahead of the bell curve. By next year, it will be standard operating procedure.

Your Facebook fans – people who like your business enough to sign up as a “fan” – will be happy to tell others about your services. You probably won’t even need to ask for testimonials.

If you haven’t ventured into Facebook yet, set up a personal account, learn a little about how it works and then create a business page. Ask your friends and your current clients or customers to become fans of your business page. Satisfied customers will start referring their Facebook friends to your page.

The basics are that simple – word of mouth made (relatively) easy.

Is spending time and energy on Facebook worth it? Here’s Facebook’s latest stats*:

• More than 300 million active users
• 50% of active users log on to Facebook in any given day
• The fastest growing demographic is those 35 years old and older

You decide.

Join us on Facebook

*[Source: http://www.new.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics]

People like Craig, who specializes in “finding ways to break out of the clutter, sameness and unfocused messages that diminish the effectiveness” of too many marketing efforts. Or Flo, who speaks Marketing + HTML + SEO + Social Media. Or Josh, who listens to radio without a radio and watches TV without a TV.  Doug, the brandmaster; Julie, our Executive Goddess; Rich, our Chief Wizard … so many great minds, so little time.

Yes, here at the ol’ blog, we will share our experiences of B2C and B2B; hospitality and medical and food categories; web-work and Omni-theaters; Fortune 500s and startups. It’s what our clients say they love about us: versatility, flexibility, a focus on facilitating business and prospect discovery.

But enough about us! Please find in the post above an example of the kind of stuff we read, and, in a moment of contrite self-promotion, see below for an example of the kind of stuff we create. Check these out, then come back for more.

Creative Water Solutions website

Dimension Printing website