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Top Tips To Help Your Brand Rock in 2011

The role of brands is changing. The human brain is a masterful excluder of irrelevant information, making us excellent selective listeners. For brands, this tends to make it rather challenging to get people to pay attention to what we have to say.

Interestingly, we are seeing brands sneaking past the gate keeper in our brains by moving into the role of entertainer. Some brands choose to push digital frontiers using technology to entertain, for example apps or 3D projection mapping, while others are evolving the more traditional methods, producing branded content or hosting events.

It’s those brands pushing boundaries and generally being interesting that become the rock stars of the business world; adored by the masses and envied by the competition.

But what do you do if you don’t have a rock star marketing budget? Fret not. It’s still possible to become a rock brand, complete with cult following even if you’re not Virgin or Coca-Cola. All you need to do is act like a rock star.

With that in mind, we’ve compiled our top tips to kick start your marketing resolutions and help your brand rock on in 2011.

1. Be Unique

To become a rock star, your brand must find its edge.

Articulate exactly what is it that makes your brand different and interesting. Once you discover that quirk or spark of originality that no one else has, run with it. No matter what industry you’re in or who your audience is, even if you’re the most convincing covers band, you’ll never make it to the big time playing someone else’s songs.

Find your point of difference or unique proposition that sets you apart from your competitors. Embrace it. Own it.

2. Be True To Your Sound

A great rock band has a distinctive sound. Sometimes their sound might evolve and mature over time but their sound remains unique to them.

To determine the sound or voice of your brand, look to your brand personality. Who is your brand and what does it stand for? There shouldn’t be any ambiguity amongst staff throughout your business on this point, but particularly amongst those who directly represent your brand to customers and the wider community.

When developing and refining your brand personality, consider your business in terms of human personality traits. This will help you to develop a consistent voice including language style and tone that can be used by staff and translated into all corporate communications, ultimately making it easy for your customers and prospects to understand and relate to your brand.

3. Be Outrageous

While it’s probably best not to trash hotel rooms or smash instruments (unless it’s relevant, of course), the most popular stars are usually the most controversial.

Being truly outrageous might not be a part of your brand personality. That’s okay. You’ll need to decide on the appropriate level of outrageousness for your brand. For many brands being outrageous could just mean being unexpected or spontaneous. In brand speak this could translate to hosting an impromptu event for your twitter followers, or giving a small gift to your customers just to say thanks for being great.

For the more adventurous brands you could try bold public installations, guerrilla stunts or making audacious comments on staff apparel (a la Nandos). Go on, live a little.

4. Be Socially Aware

There comes a time in the career of almost every rock star, when they will choose to advocate for a charitable organisation or cause. Whether you’re a small business or large organisation, committing to socially responsible business practices very clearly shows that you support your community. Demonstrating that your business cares for more than profit helps to build consumer trust and respect for your brand.

As with many things in life, actions speak louder than words. Donating money is great, but committing to action can be a stronger signal. But whether it’s pledging a percentage of sales, giving your employees paid volunteer days, or committing to recycling or sustainable packaging, every little bit counts.

10 Tricks To Reduce Your Landing Page Load Time (And Why It Matters)

Ever feel like your website is being judged before it’s even finished loading? That’s probably because it is.

Everyday Google ranks billions of webpages on the internet and there’s one little known factor that could mean the difference between a good ranking in Google and a great ranking. That factor is Page Load Time.

What Is Page Load Time?

“Site speed reflects how quickly a website responds to web requests” – Google

According to Google’s webmaster guidelines, page load time is the time that it takes to load the HTML content of your webpage. That is, the way that the document is constructed so the browser knows how to layout your page.

How Is Page Load Time Judged Exactly

Google says that page load time is a factor in ranking a website in their search results. While it is not as influential in ranking your page as the relevance of your page compared to what was searched for, topicality, and reputation (generally thought of as how many relevant links you have pointing at the page), the speed with which your page loads can make the difference between a good ranking and a great ranking in Google and other search engines.

To rank your website’s speed Google compares your page’s load time with that of other websites on similarly located web servers.

This means that if your site is hosted on a web server physically located in Brisbane, Australia, Google will compare your website’s speed with other load times of websites in Brisbane.

Your web page could be determined as having slow performance if it’s load time exceeds the average load time for your web server’s area + 4 seconds.

Why Is Page Speed Being Used For Ranking?

Google said in their recent blog post that speeding up websites is important. In fact you’ll notice that even after all these years they are still obsessed with speed (seriously, check out the amount of time it takes to return a web search next time you search for something it’s phenomenal how quickly they can process that data).

To take this obsession with speed to a whole new level, Google conducted internal studies on page speed, realising in the end that “speed matters”.

Users will spend measurably less time on a website that is slow compared to one that responds quickly. Those 100 milliseconds really do make a difference.

What Happens If I Don’t Address A Slow Loading Page/Website?

What you can expect if you let page speed problems go unaddressed is increasingly poor rankings in the major search engines.

If you run Google AdWords campaigns to get visitors to your website you can also expect poor keyword scores in your campaigns meaning they could stop running altogether.

10 Things You Can Do To Lower Page Load Times

Here is our top 10 list of things you can do today to lower your website’s page load times:

1. Be standards compliant
2. Compress your images in appropriate formats and use CSS sprites for background images if you can
3. Optimize the order things load on your website – here’s a cool tool
4. Minify your javascript
5. Minify your CSS stylesheets
6. Combine javascript files into one file to reduce http requests
7. Enable compression on your web server
8. Avoid using CSS @import
9. Minimize the amount of redirects
10. Put CSS in the document head and Javascript in the footer (where possible)

How Are You Optimizing Your Pages?

As page load times become more and more important in the ranking algorithms of the search engines it’s important to optimise your site properly. How are you getting on with optimising your website? Let us know in the comments.

Vodafone Get Interactive (With Help From Carlos)

Vodafone Australia have launched their Power Pinata interactive campaign. It’s effectively a Facebook app in which users can watch Carlos the robot wack a pinata on their behalf. Once Carlos breaks the pinata, a whole stack of prizes will be up for grabs for those committed Vodafone likers.

In the mean time, Vodafone are engaging current and potential customers, building a neat facebook brand community and generating a bit of buzz. I just hope Carlos is hiding some special ninja moves because, at this point, it looks like this might take a while.

Check it out on YouTube or Facebook.

The ABC’s of the Web: Apps, Browsers, Cookies & More

20 Things I Learned About Browsers & The Web is a concise journey through the basics of the web. Published by the Google Chrome team, this e-book provides introductory insight into a range of topics including browsers, web apps, cookies and online security. It’s full of handy tips for the digital novice including how to spot a suspicious website from its URL, and how to get the most out of your browsing experience.

Even though it’s written by Google, there are only minor direct plugs for the Chrome browser. The focus is instead on, touting the benefits of the modern browser for the greater good.

Overall this is a nice introduction for anyone looking to get a handle on the basics of the web. You can read 20 Things I Learned About Browsers & The Web here.

Is Your Brand a Great Social Media Conversationalist?

In the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes.

Andy Warhol

Enter social media and it turns out Andy was right. And then some.

Our customers are far from nobodies. They’re broadcasted continually across the World Wide Web. Some more notorious than others, but virtually all accessible.

We are now able to get closer to our customers than ever before. To build personal relationships through the art of conversation. Businesses large and small are engaging their customers in digital dialogue to build relationships, solicit feedback and provide new levels of customer service.

The nature of relationships is reciprocal, however, and so as we get to know them, customers too have the opportunity to get intimate with our brands. So how do we put our best foot forward in this global conversation to charm our powerful friends?

Here are some tips to help your brand master the art of great social media conversation.

Listen first. Talk later.

A great conversationalist listens carefully before speaking. You wouldn’t jump into a face to face conversation without first listening to what it’s about. So before you unleash a barrage of tweets or status updates, take some time to monitor the conversations that are already taking place.

Take stock of where your brand currently stands online. Find out what people are already saying about your brand and about your competitors and who is doing the talking.

Converse, don’t sell.

The golden rule that businesses must remember is that the social media environment is just that; Social. Users join a social network for entertainment and human interaction. It’s quite unlikely they’ll be happy to hear your blatant sales pitch.

That’s not to say you shouldn’t let your fans or followers know about special offers, new products or store openings from time to time, but refrain from constant or pushy sales messages. Instead, show you care by ensuring your contributions are useful and interesting.

Always be yourself.

The key to building successful relationships is maintaining open and honest dialogue. Social media provides a fantastic opportunity connect with customers and prospects on a personal level. Let them know what your brand stands for.

Internally, ensure that all employees who will speak on behalf of your brand are aware of the appropriate brand personality and tone of voice that should be used. A clear strategy and policies are vital.

Balance quality with quantity.

A well-balanced conversation is a good conversation. Find the happy place between talking too much and awkward silence.

Fewer more valuable contributions speak far louder than constant or pointless babble, so don’t go overboard with the updates, messages or tweets. On the other hand, it’s best to avoid awkward silence. Once you make the commitment to get social, make sure you participate on a regular basis.

Never ignore your fans or followers or delete their comments. Awkwardness always ensues, and it’s unlikely to involve silence. Remember negative noise can spread quickly so diffuse any negativity before it escalates.

Don’t be a bore.

Our final tip needs little explanation. Remember that your brand is entering a social environment, so it’s important to be respectful of this. Strategically charm your community with relevant games, engaging applications and useful information.

By mastering the above, your brand can become a valuable participant in social media conversations. Be strategic and you’ll have personal access to your most loyal customers and brand advocates. Although social media isn’t meant for explicitly pushing sales, it does provide an opportunity to let your brand personality shine. Become a brand of choice, and sales will follow.

Let’s Take Things Slow

Every day the average consumer is exposed to hundreds, even thousands, of advertising messages. As we all vie for the attention and affection of our consumers, the competition steadily intensifies as, more and more, we compete across categories and industries and markets. So what do we do? How do we woo our ideal consumers?

Often in our vain attempt to convince our audience to partner with us, romance goes out the window and we simply yell louder. We try to say more. But do we really need to say anything at all to have a meaningful connection with our audience? Pedigree thinks not.

In the following television commercial, Pedigree takes things slow and succeeds in making an emotional connection with their dog loving audience. The emotion was heightened with the use of slow motion, an effect that was achieved with a Phantom camera that shot 1000 frames per second.

Simple. Emotional. Memorable.

Enjoy.

Clever Guerrilla Marketing

Have a break – have a KitKat…Chair?

This is a really clever guerrilla marketing piece for KitKat in NZ. These ‘posters’ were located at a free concert, which came in rather handy for a lucky few attendees! Guerrilla marketing pieces like this are great for making a big impact on a relatively low budget but, as is evident from the KitKat Chair, there is also a large commitment of time and creativity required. It was definitely worth it in the case of this innovative PR exercise.

Via: Coupdemainmag

MOVE into Outdoor Advertising

This week marked the national launch of MOVE (Measurement of Outdoor Visibility and Exposure), an initiative of the Outdoor Media Association. MOVE is a new audience measurement system intended to make audience reach measures of out of home advertising more consistent and accurate. The MOVE system will provide media buyers with a more precise idea of how many people are likely to see the outdoor advertisement.

Getting creative with out of home advertising is a great way to touch base with your customers and prospects while they’re out and about. With the right location and a generous splash of creative, you have the opportunity to make a lasting impact on your audience and generate invaluable word of mouth. Out of home advertising is best as a part of an integrated strategic campaign.

There are some great examples out there of cleverly executed out of home advertising, including outdoor advertising channels such as bus stop advertising and billboard advertising. Here are just a few…

The “Rain Changes Everything” campaign for Papakura District Council, NZ featured a billboard that bleeds when it rains.

This is an attention grabbing piece for release of Patricia Cornwell’s The Scarpetta Factor.

An example of just one of the clever creative billboards for the True Blood series.

This enlightened billboard for The Economist uses motion-sensing technology to light up when someone walks under it.

Creative3 – Creativity x Investment x Enterprise

As we continue to move from the information age to the conceptual age, I am a firm believer that creativity, and the creative industries, are becoming a more significant and even critical component of the emerging developed world economy.

It’s an argument championed by Daniel Pink a few years ago in his book A Whole New Mind: Why Right-brainers Will Rule the Future. With the future in its hands, the creative industries are certainly an exciting place to be, and the Creative3 forum is the place to learn, share and network with the industries best.

Creative3 is an exciting industry forum focusing on the point where creativity, investment and enterprise meet.

Hosted by QUT Creative Enterprise Australia, and taking place in Brisbane from 14-16 April 2010, this first of a kind event boasts an impressive range of keynote speakers providing their insight and support to creative businesses.

This is shaping up to be a must attend event for anyone connected to the creative industries, as well as those who realise the importance of investment into a significant part of the emerging Australian economy. From entrepreneurs to venture capitalists, this forum has much to offer, including Australia’s first investment pitching session with prices valued at more that $100,000 up for grabs.

Learn more about Creative3 at the creative 3 website: http://creative3.com.au

Hue are you?

Whether you are reinvigorating an existing brand or starting from scratch, colour is a powerful influence on how your customers perceive your brand. Remember, your brand isn’t what you say it is – it’s what your customers say it is. So it’s really important to consider the emotional impression your colours will make.

Colour is a visual language that communicates with us on a subconscious level and can influence our moods and emotions. The impact of colour is based on learned associations that are a product of our experiences, tradition and culture. Therefore when selecting colours for your brand or corporate identity make sure you keep in mind who you want to talk to and how you want to be perceived.

Last year, the issue of colour as intellectual property reached a peak with Cadbury and Darrell Lea, and BP and Woolworths battling it out for rights to shades of purple and green, respectively. This just highlights the power of colour as a highly effective and valuable communication tool.

If you need a bit of inspiration take a look at Colourlovers, which is a great resource that matches your search terms or desired meanings with colour palette options.

Riding the wave – the google wave

Since last week’s announcement, the web has been abuzz with discussions and reactions to what is quite possibly Google’s boldest project in years: Google Wave.

It appears a Wave is a live communications object that 2 or more people can participate and interact with at any time. It’s a bit like a blend of an email, IM, wiki and social networking tool all rolled into one.

The big news however, is the proposed open source nature of the protocol that powers the wave. This effectively allows any service provider to build wave servers and wave clients, much as they can with email servers and clients. The success and ubiquitous nature of email is largely due to its open standard protocol, and Google’s move to position Wave as an open standard, both client and server side, dramatically increases the likelihood of mass adoption.

It is for this reason that there has been much commentary heralding the beginning of the end of email’s reign as the king application of the internet. While we heard similar arguments with RSS, Facebook and twitter, it does seem plausible that Google’s new, open protocol for direct and group messaging could chip away at email’s dominance over the next decade or so.

My first reaction to seeing the demo was “Wow, businesses are going to love this, how much more efficient is this going to make multi-participant email conversations”. 

My second reaction was “Perhaps this is a little too complicated. Email is simple and straight forward, yet how many corporate dramas are created by the accidental or misuse of the ‘reply all’ button. How will the workplace cope with such a dangerously flexible and complicated communication tool?”

My third reaction was “This platform is going to enable marketers to engage with customers in some seriously cool ways. With the ability to build extensions and gadgets, and the communication being a live object, this is going to radically change the electronic direct marketing game.”

My gut feeling at the moment, is that marketers need to watch the wave very carefully this year, as adoption is likely to be rapid, opening up a new line of communication with the consumer. In the short term, it is likely to be yet another channel we need to manage. In the medium term, with developers building gateways between wave and platforms like email, twitter and facebook, Google Wave could become a central aggregator to our currently fragmented online communications. In the long term, it could even knock email off its block. However with many people sporting a multi-decade email habit, I don’t see this happening anytime soon.

One thing’s for sure, at Enso we’ll be keeping a very close eye on Google Wave and its implications for changing the game of email marketing as we know it.

Enso Supports Redkite Y4K Colour Ball

Every year, Enso donates creative marketing, design and production services to select charitable causes.

We are very happy to have recently worked with the fantastic Y4K committee, providing creative design services for the promotion of the 2009 Redkite Y4K Colour Ball.

The Colour Ball, an annual evening of exciting entertainment and networking with young Sydney professionals, is shaping up to be a memorable event in 2009 with the theme of “Ultra Violet”.

It all happens on Saturday 4th July at Sydney’s Darling Harbour, so gather your friends and enjoy one of Sydney’s best nights out for a great cause.

Redkite supports children, young people and their families through cancer.

For more information, and to secure your tickets, visit the website at http://www.redkite.org.au/colourball

Hope to see you there.

The tightest link between buyer and seller

“Email is the tightest link ever forged between buyer and seller. Email is the heart beat of the internet.”

These words were delivered by Stan Rapp, 82 year old veteran of direct marketing and chairman of marketing agency Engauge, at the Email Evolution Conference in Scottsdale, Arizona earlier this year.

Stan Rapp is often credited as the pioneer of one-to-one direct marketing, and the above statement is one that should be carefully considered by anyone involved in brand marketing.

Unfortunately many organisations are not giving email marketing the limelight it deserves, and these are the same organisations that are unknowingly leaving money on the table. Some organisations have the perception that email is ‘cheap’ and subsequently fail to invest in the strategic planning and resources required to deliver their customers value and generate return. It is true that email marketing is very cost efficient, and well executed strategies are delivering returns far above those delivered by any other channel.

Email is rapidly evolving from an auxiliary marketing channel into the central brand-relationship, and direct-sales channel around which other marketing activities are being organised. Savvy marketing departments are realising this, and with the current economic situation, are reaping the cost effective benefits of investing in the channel.

Simms Jenkins recently published a brief but interesting interview with Stan Rapp at iMedia Connection titled “Why email marketing deserves more respect”. A must read for all marketers yet to realise the true value of email marketing.

Creative Tea Package design

Coffee and tea packaging and products can offer a great touchpoint for your marketing initiatives. The clever folks over at WDARU have come up with some very creative and fun teabag designs for the consumer tea lover.

When we produce coffee and tea brand reminders for our clients at enso they are always received well and generate good exposure. Something to consider in your channel mix.

Via: designboom

Must see brand presentation

This is one of my all time favourite presentations on the fundamentals of branding, and a great piece of design as well.

At Enso we direct clients to this presentation all the time, especially when they come to us with an obvious gap that needs to be bridged between their business strategy and their brand design.

Download the presentation by Marty Neumeier here.

Marty Neumeier’s book The Brand Gap, is fantastically succinct, and an absolute must have in every brand or marketing manager’s library.  It’s one of the most worn books in Enso’s brand, marketing and strategy library and is an inspiring read every time I pick it up. A great reminder of what brings innovative brands to life.

If you don’t already own this book, and you work with a brand in any way, you need to own it!

Check out and buy the book from Amazon here! The best money you’ll ever spend on your brand (besides coming to Enso of course!).

Creative Guerrilla Marketing

The poster acts as a business card tear off to promote a local dentist. The more cards that get pulled the more teeth go missing from the mouth. Simple and fun.

Via: Guerrilla Communication

Information Architects – Web Trends Map v4

Information Architects have published their 4th edition of the Web Trends Map. The map puts the 333 most influential web domains and 111 most influential web people onto a tokyo metro map. Domains are evaluated on traffic, revenue, age and the company that owns it.

The tubes that connect the domains represent the type of company or service. For example the blue line is for news services and the orange line is for creative.

Very Cool Visualisation !

Link to high res flickr image here. May take some time to load.

Welcome to the Enso Blog

Welcome to the new Enso blog.

Check back regularly for insights, commentary and links to all things marketing, brand and communications focused. We will also include production tips, techniques and links to other great creative and technical resources. Remember to also sign up to our Orange Newsletter that features all our best articles and is delivered fresh to your inbox.

Feel free to contact us at any time if you have any requests or comment on any of the posts if you want to join the conversation.

Hope you Enjoy.

The Enso Team