The Secret and Marketing Presence

A lot of folks treat marketing and advertising as a form of insurance, a sort of protection against the crisis day when the phone stops ringing and the nobody walks through the front door. In fact, that dreaded day came for many a business over the past few months; frequently their insurance policy failed to pay off.

Some wait until their showroom floor resembles a morgue before thinking about doing any marketing. They’re thinking: “Dear Lord, what will we do if this offer doesn’t pull in some business.”

Will your work be creative and innovative while a cloud of doom hovers over your head? If you’re advertising under duress, the universe responds in kind and brings you what you dread the most. It’s as if your customers can smell panic.

On the other hand, if you enjoy the marketing process, stay the course through thick and thin, proceed with positive long term expectations, keep a calm and quiet mind, and focus on remaining thankful for the myriad gifts we so often overlook, the universe will bring you more to be thankful about.

Here’s the math: Q=SM2. The quality of your work is geometrically proportional to your state of mind. It’s the Secret Formula for Success. Along these lines a quote from Eckhart Tolle:

When you are present in this moment, you break the continuity of your story, of past and future. Then true intelligence arises, and also love. The only way love can come into your life is not through form, but through that inner spaciousness that is Presence. Love has no form.

Parenthetically Speaking (or Writing)

Does attention to detail in your writing make you look smarter? Does it improve your marketing skills? It’s not hard to make a case for that. Just as clean fingernails and polished shoes help make a positive impression, so does your attention to grammar, syntax and punctuation.

So here (courtesy of Empire State College, NY) is a helpful guide to alleviate a frequently heard question: should one put the period inside or outside the parenthesis?

Short Answer: Punctuate correctly in and around parentheses. If a whole sentence is inside parentheses, then put the period inside the end parenthesis. If only part of the sentence is in parentheses, then the period goes outside of the end parenthesis.

Examples: Parentheses are like polite back seat drivers. (They interrupt to explain additional information that the reader should know.) Parentheses can hold explanations, illustrations, or clarifications forty (Byron was 36; Nathanael West, Rimbaud, and Robert Burns were 37; Thomas Wolfe and Pushkin were 38; and Dylan Thomas was 39). I told him I absolutely believe in marriage (as a cure for the temporary insanity of infatuation). Parentheses are also used to set off dates, provide reference information, and to enumerate a list.

• Angela Merici (1470-1540), an Italian, founded the Ursulines in 1535, an unconventional religious order in which women took vows but lived at home and taught in the community.
• The Chinese poet Li Po (c.700-762), a “lighthearted winebibber,” fell out of a boat and was drowned when he tried to kiss and embrace the moon’s reflection in the water (Hendrickson 111).
• The reason there are so many popular bike trails outside of Washington, D.C., is that the land is mostly flat (see contour map on page 6).
• If your toddler does not sleep through the night there are several questions to ask: (1) Have you developed a soothing bedtime ritual? (2) When checking on your child, do you accidentally wake him or her? (3) Is your toddler afraid of the dark? (4) Is your toddler waking regularly in the night hungry or thirsty? (5) Does your toddler use a pacifier or “cuddly” so he or she is able to comfort himself or herself?

Company recognized by Adobe Systems

Our Copies&Ink division was recently honored by Adobe Systems as a Success Story on the Adobe Systems website. Our thanks to Laura Thurman of Big Sky Communications who wrote the feature story, and our client Erin Johnson of Aubrey and Associates, whose project was also featured in the story.

The article can be viewed online on here or viewed as an Acrobat document.

Parade of the Fads

In harsh economic times, it’s tempting to hop on the bandwagon and try cashing in on the fad of the month. It’s rarely a paying bet. By the time you’re firmly seated, the wagon has gone way past the bank.

Case in point: The regrettable 2005 decision of TV Station KTLA to trade in venerable Rose Parade host Stephanie Edwards for a younger model. That year we Angelinos all watched our beloved Stephanie get soaked in the rain while her less capable replacement bumbled her way through the broadcast in a warm, dry booth.

The gambit: new is better than old.

Taken another way, it’s a marketer’s lack of respect for her/his customers. It’s telling your customers: “you’re not smart enough to know better.”

That’s a strategy that can backfire, and frequently does. Did you know anyone who wasn’t at least a bit tweaked by the Rose Parade fiasco? It made parade fans of all ages mad as hell, myself included.

If there’s a lesson, maybe it’s this: any long-lived business model involves respecting your clients and their ability to decipher your value equation. It’s about appealing to your customers highest values, and steering way clear of the lowest common denominator.

Remember the reign of Krispy Kreme? Is Heidi’s Yogurt still around anywhere? What’s the shelf life of a TV reality show? Fads lack substance; their perceived value is low. They devalue the market.

Innovation sounds new, though the insightful, virtuosic thinking behind innovative ideas has been around for ages. So have truly great journalists, like Stephanie. It’s just that you don’t find them on every corner.

Organic Marketing Part 2: What’s Your Story?

It must have been the 1960s. Still, I can still remember the agony of my junior high history class. It was a mind numbing succession of dates, names and places. The teacher, who may have been old enough to have been present at the signing of the Mayflower Compact, spoke in a monotone drawl that could induce a state of stupor within seconds. I slept.

Where was the torment of the wrenching decision by handful of patriots that declared indendence from Britain? Where was the gripping oratory of John Adams?  Where was the story of sacrifice and hardship of Abigail Adams, and the eloquence of Thomas Jefferson’s pen? Why did my classmates have to endure a year that was filled with so little, when America’s history is teeming with gripping stories just waiting to be told.

If you’d like to learn how to write copy for your next newsletter or direct mail letter, just watch HBO. Rent a DVD of John Adams and enter the world of our early patriots. Fear, passion, anger, suffering, laughter and joy; the full scope of human emotion. Tell a real story, and capture the minds of your listeners. It’s genetically coded in the human race.

So much of what arrives in a mailbox these days is devoid of anything a living breathing human being can relate to. Postcards and brochures are often no more interesting than a supermarket shopping list. Newsletters: thinly disguised billboards. Web pages: just add liquid and you’ve got your own website in 30 minutes or less. Nice to look at, but no substance.

Is it any wonder that high and low, folks are clamoring: “stop the spam?”

Our lives are filed with stories. Turn your senses in their direction. Be it lawn service or Attorney at Law, you’ve got a story to tell. People will listen.