Here is what Seth has to say: “People and brands and organisations that stand for something benefit as a result. Standing for something helps you build trust, makes it easier to manage expectations and aids in daily decision making.”

Failure to do so, means that you and your thoughts are blowing with the wind, trying to please everyone all the time. As I wrote yesterday, this is a time for leadership.

Seth riffs: “You can't be the low-price, high-value, wide-selection, convenient, green, all-in-one corner market. Sorry.
You also can't be the high-ethics CEO who just this one time lets an accounting fraud slide. "Because it's urgent."
You can't be the big-government-fighting, low-taxes-for-everyone, high-services-for-everyone, safety-net, pro-science, faith-based, anti-deficit candidate either.
You can't be the work-smart, life-in-balance, available-at-all-hours, high-output, do-what-you're-told employee.

To really stand for something, you must make difficult decisions, mostly about what you don't do. We don't ship products like that, we don't stand for employees like that, we don't fix problems like that.”

You need to stand for something, have values and beliefs that really matter to you and to your customers and deliver your promises consistently. Stand for something, live your brand every day.

The article concludes: “Its data shows a strong correlation between market share and the level of 'bonding’ – an aggregate measure of multiple brand–consumer relationship metrics. The clear implication being that if budget cutting results in a decline in ‘bonding’, then market share can be expected to decline. Crucially, further data demonstrates that two key constituent brand relationship metrics – brand usage and brand image – suffered considerably (13% and 6% declines respectively) when brands ‘went dark’ (i.e. ceased to spend on communications) for a period of six months or more. More broadly, 60% of brands ‘going dark’ see decline in at least one key relationship metric after just six months.”

In the past year, I have seen evidence first-hand that suggests that brands that cut their budget relative to competitors are at greater risk of share loss. It’s time to shine out in the financial media blackout.

It has been mooted that some of these agencies are having to move their creative teams onto three day weeks. Others are losing major account business and have alarming concentrations of overdependency on these clients. Don’t get me wrong, this is not a smug “I told you so” piece, this is an inevitable balancing process which should lead to a new surge of accountable creativity. 

For it is accountability that has fuelled the boutique agency boom. We have seen numerous large agency pitches this year that promise brand building activity and enhancing the customer experience but which fail to consider the impact on revenues and profitability. After all, the goal no longer is simply enquiry, it's conversion - not just intent to purchase, but an actual purchase. Surprisingly, the former world of advertising is still a culture which pervades the large integrated marketing agencies of today. And agencies with that mindset simply don’t want their creativity constrained by accountability.
 
Enter the boutique specialist marketing agencies primed to provide clients with talent and experience in a leaner, results-oriented model.  Smaller has become better as the boutiques spearhead a market shift by committing to improving brand performance. With increasingly fragmented delivery channels, it's never been more critical to be able to measure success, pound for pound. At the larger agencies rarely is your business served by someone whose own bottom line is affected by the success of your campaign. At a boutique agency, a senior partner will oversee your account with a vested interest in your success. 

Everything is on the line.  Everything impacts on the bottom line - yours and ours. Your success is our success.

There are ten major business factors that directly influence the loyalty and commitment of customers:

Values - Core attributes and beliefs that resonate with your clients
Positioning - Unique value propositions not found within your competitors
Satisfaction - Delighting your clients with superior service
Offering - Relevant products and services that fulfil specific needs
Location - Locale can be a strong determining factor for high touch services
Inertia - Client / market apathy can affect loyalty – however this is fragile and can be reversed given the right conditions
Difficulty of Switch - If there are too many hoops to jump through or hurdles to climb
Involvement - The greater the degree of interaction and collaboration the harder it is for a competitor to break into and break up the client relationship
Demographics - Synergies such as population characteristics and alignment to a service can prove highly effective
Share of wallet - the percentage ("share") of a customer's expenses ("of wallet") for a product or service that goes to the firm selling the product or service.

The Design Council research, which covered 1,500 UK firms of all sizes and across all sectors, showed that design is rising up the business agenda. Over half (53 per cent) of the businesses surveyed said that design has become more critical in helping the firm achieve its business objectives over the past three years; and the same number agreed that design is integral to the whole country’s future economic performance.

2. XYZ’s brand promise is unique and distinctive:
(state core essence here)

3. We enjoy working with XYZ

4. We are very pleased with the service we receive from XYZ

9. Which of the following services will your organisation buy in the next 6 to 12 months?
(List)

Its value is that you can access your bookmarks from anywhere, they are not device-dependent in any way. Also, since I always have a number of writing projects on the go at any one time, it is a rapid way to collect and organise a whole stack of web-based source material, under topic area or the order in which I would like the information to appear. It gives me references to articles, facts, figures, stats and quotes that are all too easy to lose on the voyage of discovery that Google and my imagination take me.

Anything that’s free, incredibly easy to sign up to, intuitive and immediately accessible gets my vote but this application is work-life changing. I’m finding new and surprising ways of using del.icio.us every day. Give it a try – maybe it will change the way you work too.

http://delicious.com/  

The Black Swan theory refers to a large-impact, hard-to-predict, and rare event beyond the realm of normal expectations. This refers to events of large consequence and their dominant role in history. To the author the banking crisis was unavoidable:

“Globalization creates interlocking fragility, while reducing volatility and giving the appearance of stability. In other words it creates devastating Black Swans. We have never lived before under the threat of a global collapse. Financial Institutions have been merging into a smaller number of very large banks. Almost all banks are interrelated. So the financial ecology is swelling into gigantic, incestuous, bureaucratic banks – when one fails, they all fall.  The increased concentration among banks seems to have the effect of making financial crises less likely, but when they happen they are more global in scale and hit us very hard. We have moved from a diversified ecology of small banks, with varied lending policies, to a more homogeneous framework of firms that all resemble one another. True, we now have fewer failures, but when they occur ….I shiver at the thought.”

I wonder what would have happened if the major banks differentiated on everything but risk!

In times where there is some disequilibrium in the buyer / seller equation through purchaser scarcity, the real driver to growth may be found in disruptive thinking. What if budgetary spend on attracting sellers were to be reversed? What if we concentrated on getting the largest community of buyers for that marketplace. Create that community, that interest group, that tribe and it could be argued that vendors will queue round the block for that kind of access to a premium buyer marketplace.

What else could you achieve by back to front marketing thinking?

Wordle is being used in interesting ways to provide compelling summaries of web sites by industry, competitors’ home pages, blog posts, twitter feeds, email correspondence, surveys, news articles and more.

The results are instant, often beautiful and always insightful. This evening, I will mainly be Wordleing!

Create your own Wordle here (I warn you, its addictive):

http://www.wordle.net/

Today, there are several challenges that a web-centric copywriter has to meet head on (because most web designers won't!):

Strategic positioning - reflecting the core brand essence
Keyword /  Keyphrase density
Contextual Links (cross-referencing linked pages throughout the site)
Main propositions above the fold
Emphasis on data capture (guides, articles, white papers as fulfilment)
Irresistible calls to action
Compelling headlines
Blocked paragraphs
Short sentences 
Conversational style
Briefing notes on Metatags and Image Tags
Accessibility
Site map planning

Are you like J Paul Getty? Do you maximise every business opportunity? Do you ask all of the questions you could do? Would asking three times the number of questions, yield
three times the opportunity?

Many companies I know are content with “striking oil”, getting the initial new business win. They work hard, satisfy the client’s business requirement and move on. The issue is that had they asked more questions at the outset they would have discovered several other projects, perhaps even more lucrative than the first.

You can get away with a new business strategy in good times, even prosper with the right momentum. In these times when the pipeline may be slower, when firms merge, sectors polarise  and the number of players in the market is reduced, there is even more reason to cross-sell and upsell than ever before.

JP Getty said: “To succeed in business, to reach the top, an individual must know all it is possible to know about that business”. The same can be said for your clients’ needs.

Focus on each of the above phases and you will be rewarded by an increase in your email click through rate.

Next, base your budgeting plans on the following straightforward steps:
An analysis of marketing spend and results from the previous year with a critique of strengths and weaknesses of the approach taken.
A workshop with senior management to discuss the strategic goals, brand differentiation, unique value propositions, challenges and opportunities and how these can be realised most effectively.
Assess which tactical marketing tools will be deployed to meet these goals, applying criteria such as strategic fit, speed to market, impact, value and degree of management involvement.
Agree a headline marketing plan in principle based on the above. Then, cost it with your marketing agency. Set realistic metrics and follow up with a formal budgetary presentation to senior management with timelines and budgets, demonstrating an approach to budget management that the board should expect of its marketing team. If this is rejected, don’t lose heart, ask why. If they stick to their guns, return with a lower budget and show the board what can be achieved for that, showing them what they are missing out on and handling their expectations on results. Then deliver what you’ve promised!

Perhaps surprisingly, the opening line of the much-loved children’s classic, Winnie the Pooh, offers a very clear message to financial marketers right now. After the past few days frenetic, jarring market activity, NOW is the time to find a place to sit and think – to take time out to plan effectively, consider alternatives objectively and then act decisively on your marketing approach for the remainder of 2009.

Leslie Bland, previous Managing Director of Close Invoice Finance, said something to me a few years ago that I have never forgotten: “Take time to work ON your business, rather than just in your business.” It’s something that we have taken to heart both with our agency and our clients' approaches to their marketing.

2010 is almost upon us, so jump (not bump) several steps ahead of your competitors and start the planning process now. Gain the benefit of our independent perspective, using us as your marketing sounding board. Visualise the marketing achievements you most want to see by the end of this year to make your financial brand even stronger for next. Re-define your marketing. Then, e-define it! Think about ways in which the Internet can enhance your customer experience and set realistic, tangible goals for continuous marketing improvement.

Why just bump along? Doing nothing may seem an easy option right now, the reality is that it’s not the most comfortable option for your business long-term.

To increase spending on marketing at this time may seem counter-intuitive, but this is exactly what businesses should be doing right now. Brands with sustained marketing expenditure will create strong competitive advantage by stealing share of voice.

Four ingredients need to be in place to steal share of voice: 

Calendar – Put deadlines and milestones against every element of your programme and monitor and measure progress.

Exordium – Big Intro
Follow up a bold statement with a big intro that captures your target audiences’ attention and imagination. Mix Ethos with Logos to establish credibility.

Narratio – Empathy
Show the audience you really identify with them and that you feel their pain.

Partitio – Contents
Outline to your audience what you’re just about to tell them in a way that heightens anticipation and helps them remember the key points.

Confirmatio – The Solution
Outline your solution. Use case studies featuring similar organisations or demographics to that of your audience, together with facts to support your case.

Refutatio – Competitive Advantage
Take the opportunity to position the strengths of your organisation, based on key attributes where your competitors are weakest.

Peroratio –  Call to Action
After a headline summary of your business case, use a strong Call to Action to close, with the emphasis on keeping a strong emotional appeal.

Think Ansoff, Covey, Kotler, Levitt, Mintzberg and Porter, rolled into one brilliantly be-robed and bearded package. Aristotle still has a lot to teach us.

1. Teleology - A Sense of Purpose
Teleology (Greek: telos: end, purpose) is summed up by the ancient Greek philosopher as follows: “First, have a definite, clear practical ideal; a goal, an objective. Second, have the necessary means to achieve your ends; wisdom, money, materials, and methods. Third, adjust all your means to that end.” Always relate your communication to your purpose. Never, ever lose sight of that. It sounds obvious but I seldom see it applied consistently.

2. Ethos - Become the Authority
Ethos is authority and credibility personified - achieved by the cultivation of a distinctive character, knowledge and experience.

3. Pathos - Engage the Emotions
Pathos describes what’s in it for your audience, with a set of compelling benefits, values and beliefs.