You know what it’s supposed to mean.

Too Close

As content creators, we know what our message is supposed to mean and are tied into the process every step of the way. But the audience has no such prior knowledge.

The key question to ask: does the audience understand the message the same way you do?

The Problem: Confusion

Usually, the problem is not that the audience got the wrong message, but that they got the no message at all. Three things are the primary causes:

1. Too dense
2. Too clever
3. Too ambiguous

1. Too Dense: Message Packing

By far, message packing is the primary culprit in audience confusion. Back in the Mad Men days of advertising, we referred to this situation as:

10 pounds of crap in a 5 pound sack

Generally, audiences can only absorb one primary message at a time. The following media should always be single-minded:

• Print Ads
• Web pages
• Banner Ads
• TV commercials

2. Too Clever: Making the Audience Work Too Hard

“Just the facts, ma’am” doesn’t move the meter in advertising and marketing. But being too clever leaves the audience wondering what it’s all about.

Use of metaphor often falls into this trap. A recent Acura commercial features a Gold Medal skier in her competition clothing. In the commercial, stop-motion animation strips her naked, then redresses her in an evening gown. Cut to the Acura.

The connection is supposed to be that the Acura is like the skier – a beautiful exterior concealing an athletic, performance-oriented machine. Clever.

Maybe too clever. All I saw was some gratuitous nudity followed by a car shot.

As a producer, I always avoided clever. I preferred unexpected as a device. Upsetting viewer expectations, even a little, can freshen up the oldest idea.

3. Too Ambiguous: Huh?

My favorite example of Too Ambiguous is the long-running line for Cisco: The Human Network. What does that mean?

Messaging should always start from a simple statement of what you do, what benefit you provide or what pain you can ease.

For Cisco, they make routers and switches. They make other stuff too, but let’s not confuse the message. Routers and switches are their main line business, the products for which they are best known.

How about: Cisco – We Connect the World

We can all think of examples of too-ambiguous messaging, lines they made us wonder just what the heck was being sold.

The Fix: Hallway Survey

So how do we fall into these messaging traps? It is because, as the creators, we always know what it is supposed to mean. Therefore, the messaging always works on us.

It is an impossible task to forget what you already know, so as creators we must rely on others. A simple hallway survey usually works.

Ask your husband, wife, kids, co-workers or neighbors, anyone not associated with your project, “What did this mean to you?” What’s the message?”

The first thing out of their mouths should align with your intent. Guide your hall-survey audience away from executional suggestions – that’s your job. Further, it makes them co-creators, defeating their value as a disinterested audience.

Always remember that your real audience really is disinterested. They have no prior knowledge of your intentions, nor do they care. You have to grab their attention, make your point and make it memorable all within a glance.

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Photo by Max Westby

Based on 20+ years working for great agencies and companies including Saatchi & Saatchi, DMB&B, The New York Times and the NFL, here’s my take on brand.

What Is A Brand

A brand is the idea of your company.

It is not your product or service. It is your philosophy.

Brand Character

Brands are an embodiment of what you represent. Embodiment literally means turning something into a body, a person, a character.

Your brand character has the attributes you’d like people to associate with your organization.

I worked on Charmin for several years. Their brand character embodies softness, doing the best for your family and trustworthiness.

Brands Vs. Branding

Once you have a well-defined brand character, you can apply that concept to any related product or service.

Consider Nike Tennis Rackets. Nike started as a shoe company. At some point, they began leveraging their brand to include all manner of related sports gear.

“We should make a tennis racket,” someone must have once said. Great. But how to make it a Nike tennis racket?

Simple: apply the unique brand character of Nike to the generic object of a tennis racket. Make the new racket stylish, uncompromising and use top quality materials and workmanship. Make it excellent and cool.

Brand Unlocks Value

A cohesive brand differentiates products and services within a category.

I once heard ad legend Jack Bowen talk about TV sets in the old Soviet Union. All the TV sets looked the same and cost the same, but they were made in two different factories.

Let’s say one was in Moscow and the other in Siberia.

Soviet shoppers knew the TVs made in Moscow were far superior to the ones made in Siberia. Although both were priced the same in stores, shoppers would pay extra cash on the side to get a Moscow set.

Jack observed that this was an example of “primitive brand loyalty.” In a market economy, the Moscow plant would communicate its superiority in its branding, thus unlocking premium pricing for its product.

Brand and Your Character

A brand is an identity for your business. It is for others to consume. It is not a statement of who you are as a person.

My Brand

We offer a lot of services here at Goodtree & Co – photography, video, web development and copywriting. But that’s not our brand character.

Our brand stands for three things: Excellence, Creativity and Innovation. It’s baked into every email, post and picture we do.

Your Brand

What does your brand stand for? Can you define it in three words? Shoot me an email or post something in the comments.

IF YOU HAVE A FACEBOOK BUSINESS PAGE

If you already have a Facebook Page for your business, you need to go have a look at what the changes have wrought on your previous design.

Many people had previously used a work-around called Extended Info to add more content to FB Pages. That info is now assigned to the sidebar, leaving the new page mostly blank.

Visit your FB Page, update the content and send a blast to your fans.

IF YOU DON’T HAVE A FACEBOOK PAGE

If you have resisted getting a FB Page for your business, now is the time. With all the new functionality, there is sure to be a rush of new Pages.

Join the fray now. On your FB Home, click on Ads and Pages (on the right, under Applications). If you don’t have Ads and Pages, search under the Applications link and add it.

Malls, mixed-use developments, shopping centers – call them what you will, they dot the landscape of America.

Many of the larger developments have websites. For the most part, they’re pretty awful. So, when we were asked to produce a new website for North Hills, a mixed-use development in Raleigh, NC, our goal was to help bring the category into a Web 2.0 world.

Two months after the launch, we have every reason to feel we’ve achieved. Stats are great, everything works, and best of all, a continuing content stream is beginning to bloom. It’s interesting stuff, too – stories, bios, pictures and video.

So here’s a checklist of things we think a contemporary mall or mixed-use website needs.

The Basics

1. A page for each merchant
2. A picture for each merchant
3. Descriptive text for each merchant (more than just a phone number and an outside link)

It is surprising how few big developments have reached this level of information. See our collection of links for malls and mixed-use developments on Delicious (and please feel free to add links to other sites in the category).

The Finer Points

1. Interactive Map
2. Continuing Content Stream
3. Ad Platform

(1) The interactive map is a challenging bit of engineering and UI. We’ll write more about it soon. (2) In most cases, developing a rich content stream requires cultural change for clients. Training and continued support are mandatory to advance evolutionary adoption of web 2.0 tools like blogs and twitter. (3) Big developments like North Hills have the potential to draw big traffic. Why settle for pennies on the dollar when you could have it all with your own ad platform? Tune in again for a discussion about implementing your own ad server.

Best Practices

To boost the performance of a site in this category as measured by key stats like Time On Site and Page Views, here are a few best practices we can recommend:

1. Minimize outside links
2. Run outside content in an iframe within your site
3. Drive traffic to niches with CPC advertising
4. Pay attention to what Analytics tells you about your audience

The Last, Most Important Point

Like all other advertising and marketing ventures, success is rooted in a good agency-client relationship. We are deeply grateful to Kane Realty Corporation for their vision and their patience throughout this project.

Special thanks to:

• Anna Smith
• Mike Smith
• Bonner Gaylord
• Jon Masterson
• Katherine Knott
• Angela Slater
• Paul Newcomer
• Walt Stewart
• North Hills Security

For Goodtree & Company:

• George Gumpert, master programmer
• David Holt, design
• John Dixon, flash
• Leslie Huffman, merchant database and blogging diva
• Hal Goodtree, precious little

Thanks also to Allen Weiss, Michael Kimsal, Lindsey Chester, Paul Harnett, Dorothea Bitler, Jill Harris, Fiquet, Kevin and Stacey Jennings, Wick Morgan and Jason Peck. And thanks to Jake St. Peter and Mike McTaggart for their generous time.

Please contact us for more information about mall, shopping center and mixed-use development websites.

BeanCast is produced and hosted by Bob Knorpp.