Wednesday, July 29, 2009

The Distance Between You and Me

Good day everyone! Welcome to another WIN Firm post by me, Chris Teague. Prior to posting today, I had the privilege of listening to one of my favorite bands, Against Me! Yes, I like punk rock very much and am influenced by its underground culture, especially the bands trying their best to make us think a little bit. So, today's post is all about closing the distance between consumers and you, or better, the distance between you and me.

"Well there's a lot of things that should be said, so we're hammering six-strings..." -Against Me!

Reflecting upon the above line a moment, I want to express how important it is to connect with your audience. Yes, we all learn about reaching "our" audience in marketing 101, but learning and doing are completely different, aren't they! Think of how many times you spent late evenings, losing sleep trying to create that dynamite campaign to boost your profits. What if you had simply looked beyond profit margins and went out looking for your audience instead? If you're not following me, you will soon will, so keep reading.

We have a client in the higher education sector that is absolutely one of the best small schools in the country. In fact, this college ranks among the nation's top 100 schools as voted on by students versus the "paid for" voting that exists. What does this mean? It means that our client is great at customer service as clearly demonstrated by student voting. So, why am I talking about connecting to an audience when it appears our client connects? Keep reading...

First of all, our client does connect with its current student population. However, the need to connect to future generations of students is very important for obvious reasons. Therefore, I want you to see how you can connect to your audience by the way we help clients connect. Imagine being able to close the distance between you and me!

Step 1: After reviewing all sorts of marketing collateral from colleges and universities across the country, my team and me at the WIN Firm discovered that the messages to attract future students pretty much said the same thing: "Come be you at our school, because we know you." Really! How is it that all of these colleges know you? I'm not quite sure, especially since many students we met with said they never saw a representative from these schools at their high school dance, pool, sporting events, coffee shops or anywhere else these fine individuals spent their time. So, there is an obvious disconnection with an audience. On a side note...what is the deal with the "mountain top theme"? Okay, back to helping you. Take a look at our approach to connecting to future college students.

Step 2: Following up on research many schools rely on for decision making, we knew there was a huge disconnection between schools and students. No offense to our fine colleges and universities and their marketing departments, but come on, do you really think that a student taking the ACT or SAT is going to give you accurate answers to why he or she chose the college they are planning on attending. Realizing that schools don't know their students, a team of us at the WIN Firm decided to go out amongst the young populace and "get to know them." Our findings? Check out the next step.

Step 3: Yes! We have done our marketing research in step one and we have knocked out our secondary market research in step two. Now it is time to follow the Apostle Paul's approach to ministry, and "walk with the people" to gather our primary research to help us with our concept development. Did you know that future college students are not just in middle school and high school? This is important to know if you are trying to actually connect to future students. We at the WIN Firm have collected a lot of information on what various generations of future students do that makes them unique and allows us to know which future students fit into various colleges. Would you like to know one of our discoveries?

Step 4: We learned that future students, no matter the generation, have one common theme they share about going to school. Today, these students want to be significant. Is it that easy? Yes, it is. However, the message to connect with these students isn't as easy as you are probably thinking right now. You can't simply say: "Be significant at the COOLEST COLLEGE EVER!" Why? Everyone else is doing it and they are attracting new students. We need to keep up with them, right? Wrong! Being status-quo is not significant. If you want someone to reach students that desire to be SIGNIFICANT, then understand them, and connect. Read step five.

Step 5: Think for a moment. What makes you significant? How do you evaluate and determine significance? If you can't answer this for yourself, there is no way you are going to connect to an audience desiring to be significant. What is your winning solution? We at the WIN Firm craft many messages to reach various audiences, so here is our approach to being significant. I, Chris Teague, am significant because: I am a child of God (my own belief, and I respect differences); am a devout husband and father; still play soccer competitively despite my age; run almost everyday; have a passion for music and attend live concerts on a regular basis; helped start a marketing firm; and have helped shape the WIN Firm to being cause-oriented to promote human compassion. Does your college or university have a curriculum for me? I bet you do, so come get to know me a little bit and show me how I can do all of these things that make me significant.

Have a blessed day everyone. See you next Wednesday!

Blessings,
Chris Teague
V.P. Marketing
WIN Firm

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Your Stop for SUCCESS!

Hello, this is Chris Teague, V.P. of the WIN Firm. Good day to all of you following the WIN Firm here on our blog! Whether you are a public or private follower, we are happy to help you see how our marketing firm works, giving you an inside look into our operations and the understanding of why we are a great asset for our clients.

From day one, we decided to post a few projects we are working on, and past ones that teach you how to achieve the same marketing success ALL of our clients have achieved. Today's post will be brief, but is designed to help you be more than just a creative individual, but be a process-oriented individual who can create the campaign you want, producing desired results. Here we go!

Imagine working for a firm or agency that has a mission and vision of using its skills and talents of communication to promote generosity and progress. Then imagine that a pre-requisite for being hired was that you were active in helping others in your community. Think of the work environment! It must be great! This environment is not utopia; rather, it is the environment we all work in at the WIN Firm. I want you to know where we come from because it is the core of our winning concepts and our clients success.

According to the Tennessee State Report Card, 47 percent of children in our region of Northeast Tennessee participate in the federal free/reduced meal program. Two out of the eight counties in our region rank among the nation's highest counties for childhood poverty. Wow! What can we do about these shocking statistics? You are about to learn what WIN is working on to help meet the needs of our community in a 3 step process.

Step 1- Identify those who presently support the effort to end childhood hunger and create a message of "Thanks." Working with our local food bank, we help communicate how wonderful those who support the food bank are in all we do. Why? See step 2.

Step 2- A common fact in business is that customer service is a key ingredient to repeat business. We firmly believe in this model and made sure that the food bank's first part of marketing was to acknowledge those who give on a personal level, keeping in touch regularly.

Step 3- Thank the donor for giving what they have never given before. We do this for the food bank's thank you letters and the return in money is incredible! Simply thanking someone for increasing their giving efforts even if they haven't, subconsciously creates a call to action for more giving. It works! We helped raise over $32,000 in thank you letters in one month!

Have a great day everyone! We will see you shortly.

Blessings,
Chris Teague
V.P. Marketing
WIN Firm

Friday, July 17, 2009

Shred YOUR Label!

What a wonderful day it is for us at the WIN Firm! We are on the brink of wrapping up a SUPER project that is really going to shape the way people think. Hello, everyone: It's Chris Teague, V.P. of the WIN Firm, bringing you another post in a series of posts designed to help YOU grow through marketing. Enjoy...and keep up with us because we are not living in the past...we embrace today and try to shape tomorrow.

Do you know right from wrong? Does knowing right from wrong stop you from doing wrong? I ask you these questions because so many companies capitalize on our confused state of mind to do what's right. Take this whole "green" trend companies are latching on to these days: isn't it getting old? Seriously, saying something is "green" is about as overused and misused as the whole Nike tagline, "Just Do It!" In fact, sales studies from Forrester research show that using "green" doesn't appeal to the average consumer. Why? Maybe, the answer is because the average consumer can't afford the more expensive "green" product. More importantly, to all of you wanting to reach consumers, doing what's right should not be expensive...should it?

Why can I go to the store and find the same "green" product at a cheaper price than your organic, eco-friendly product with the exception that the label doesn't say it is eco-friendly? In an environment fueled by TV warnings of economic meltdown, we are all more aware of our spending as consumers today. Therefore, we are actually doing the "right" thing and shopping carefully, abstaining from making unnecessary, expensive purchases. Anyways, most consumers wander if buying a "green" product is even the "right" thing to do for us.

Think about it from this perspective as well, as a marketer I see the word "green" being too close to "greed." Knowing that this play on words possibly triggers my subconscious to thinking green is bad, I can see why I am often opposed to buying products that are labeled "green," all the while thinking I am doing the "right" thing. Am I though? Would you like to see how we market a product that is eco-friendly, pocket price friendly and does more than promoting good on a label? Then, follow these steps and discover how to effectively reach us all, communicating the "right" thing to do:

Step 1: We took a product and completely ripped its label to shreds, tore the packaging up and stomped on it right in front of our client. What happened? The client was ticked off! However, knowing what kind of work we do, the client quickly realized there was a lesson to be learned. That lesson? Quit copying everyone else and be YOU. Yes, we know how to communicate a brand at WIN, which is why this process worked and works.

Step 2: After explaining the strategy of looking across consumer buying boundaries (we can explain this strategy if you would like in another post), we were able to create a more dynamic marketing model for the client's product that outsold all of its competitors almost 4-1. How can you do the same thing? Pay attention to the next step.

Step 3: While I just gave you the end result in step 2, I wanted you to see how important this step I am explaining now is for success. If you want people to do the "right" thing, then you need to explain to them the importance of doing the "right" thing. Therefore, we created a simple Thank YOU program for everyone who purchased the product. We wrote a little personalized letter that thanked them for buying a product that was made by hands helping to feed others and why this help was needed. Wow! Nobody even knew that they were helping at the point of purchase. The lesson we want you to learn here is that you can reach your consumers in a more personal way if you aren't too lazy.

Step 4: Lastly, we included in the Thank YOU program a way for consumers to keep making "right" choices by listing other products that went to help similar causes. Yes, we highlighted our competitor's efforts of caring so that the consumer really could make a conscious choice in continued "green" support if they so desired. You have already seen the results listed in step 2, so we know what we're doing. Anyways, isn't being "green" about helping? Hmmm...

Blessings,
Chris Teague
V.P. Marketing
WIN Firm

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Following Trends is Lame: Setting Trends ...

Hello, and welcome to another post by me, Chris Teague, V.P. of Marketing for the WIN Firm. I am following up on the previous post, "People are Buying." Today's post will open your mind to the inner-workings of my mind, which is the engine behind many of our campaigns and concepts developed here at the WIN Firm. Have you ever felt that you had the perfect idea, and then let it slip your mind? Then, months down the road, there is a news article about some person who has just perfected your idea and is doing quite well! What if you could follow a marketing blog and actually be able to put that idea to use when you have it? Our purpose for this blog is to help you in every way become the business professional or company you want to be! We will show you exactly how we create a lasting brand through cause marketing for multi-national and small mom and pop businesses. Let's get started with today's post!

Did you like the title for today's post? If not, no big deal, but I know it caught your eye and that's really all I wanted! You will discover reading all about our work at the WIN Firm, that getting your attention is what we do, but keeping your attention is how we have earned the respect of many companies throughout the world. Do you own an iPhone? Do you have the newest app? Do you "tweet" daily? Are you on FaceBook? All the questions I just asked you are part of today's trend, which is really losing touch with people. Yes, I think that Apple has done an excellent marketing job by completely making consumers dependent upon technology through their apps, but they haven't really embraced any new developing trends. We at the WIN Firm like to dig a little deeper than the surface of trends and go underground to find the next emerging trends people will gravitate to in the future. Trust me, there is no app for this work and our clients trust us completely to find these underground trends, putting them in front. As you continue to read this post, you will discover how to find an emerging trend as well, so keep up with me ok!

First, to find a new trend you must get out of your comfort zone of the current trend and see what people are doing out there in the world. The best marketers in the world are the ones that don't sit in an office everyday on the computer or attend meetings inside all day. Nope, the best marketers watch your every move and do their best to understand why you walk the way you do and talk the way you do. We follow this type of research to identify trends at WIN and you will see how effective it is for our clients. You will learn in this post the first step to being in front of the bus instead of reading the billboard on the side of the bus that has your idea as it leaves you behind.

Imagine being at the place full of people different than you that makes you feel the most uncomfortable. What are you thinking right now? I gave it a thought, and feel like everyone is seeing right through me and wants me to leave. Now, think about the people that are in this uncomfortable place. How can you relate to them so that you would be more comfortable? Think about it for a moment. You know exactly why this place makes you feel uncomfortable, so make it work for you. Imagine taking the next step and actually going to this place knowing exactly what you needed to do to be comfortable and showing up! If you can do this exercise, then you will be able to take the first step to setting a trend. If you can identify with an audience that makes you feel uncomfortable by understanding how to relate to them so you fit in, you will understand how companies keep their brands so strong and why they value marketing groups', like the WIN Firm, concepts. Concepts that position your business above the trends are ones we focus on at WIN, and we want you to learn how to be just as creative as we are! I look forward to hearing your stories of identifying new trends by leaving what's comfortable behind and embracing a new scene.

Blessings,
Chris Teague
V.P. Marketing
WIN Firm

Sunday, July 12, 2009

What's In a Name Part II

Hello! To pick up on last entry, I would like to talk further about General Motors and their name change in the realm of numbers and energy.

Numerology refers to the numbers 1 through 9 and offers a basic characteristic or keyword for each number. Every number over 9 ultimately reduces to a single digit. With knowledge of the meaning of each number, one can understand the order of numbers in our lives. Believe it or not, your company name, your corporate brand holds energy and communicates this energy based on the spelling of the name. I also take in consideration the color and the design of the brand in the intuitive analysis and of course, the application of those elements.

In looking at General Motors and discerning whether or not they would benefit from a name change, it is interesting to note what “General Motors” “GM” and “General Motors Corporation” communicate by way of numerology.

“General Motors” and “General Motors Corporation” both have the same “destiny” or what I refer to as a “directional” number, which suggests the overall consciousness of the company. Both spellings have a directional number of a “9” which represents endings. But also, 9 is a global/humanitarian number. In fact, a 9 vibrates to the role of unconditional love, and the color green.

Now, keep in mind, corporations can experience crises, just like people experience crises when they do not live up to their vibrational number(s). So perhaps rather than changing their name, living up to their numbers may be the best thing for General Motors. I know this is an “ouch” but really looking at their numbers, including the life path number and honestly asking if you are living up to your potential is most important.

Having a 9 means they can be universal, it does not mean to dominate, it means to be universal, global. Their life path number, which is the d/m/yyyy the company was officially “born” was September, 16. 1908 which adds up (9/16/1908) to a 25/7. That tells me as well that it is necessary to come from a more spiritually based (morally based) objective. If they shift their consciousness, rather than their name, GM should thrive.

In the article by Emily Fredrix she also cited several corporations that changed their names and their image. I would like to reference some other name changes and “vibrational shifts” based on those changes. Some, although they shifted the name, did not shift their “destiny” “directional” vibration (number). I will talk a little about these corporations next entry.

Of course, other numbers come into play, such as the life path number of a company (the “birth date”) as I mentioned with GM, but my time is short here and this entry is long! I would like to add that yesterday I heard GM changed its name to "General Motors Company" to project a smaller more manageable company. Does this change work with the numerology? YES! because now they shift from a 9, which is the more global, humanitarian number to a 6 Directional Number, which is about caregiving and nurturing. It will be interesting to watch and see how they live up to this vibration.

See you next time!

Blessings, Catherine Poole, CMO of The WIN Firm

Thursday, July 2, 2009

People are Buying!

Good day everyone! I wanted to post an entry before those of us in the U.S. take time to celebrate our Independence Day. Today's post is a follow up to our theme of "sharing". However, you will discover from this post and moving forward, a series of posts that lead you through the workings of our firm and shed some light as to why we are small, work with BIG clients and are capable of producing your desired results. We are the WIN Firm, and our name is the beginning, middle and end of all we do. As you read this blog and follow our series, you will see that we value our clients and want to help them engage people on various levels with the sole intent of producing a winning formula. Therefore, you will discover in your reading that we share our work with YOU because it is how we ensure our clients become successful.

The best phrase(s) we love (and imagine you do as well) to hear at WIN is/are: "People are buying. We are really seeing an increase in customer satisfaction!" Wow! Doesn't that just make you feel good inside! We have won numerous design, concept and creative awards for our efforts, but none of those even come close to the feeling we have when our clients see the fruits of our labor. Imagine knowing that every client you work with has something great to say about you! Would you even need to show case studies to get new work? What if you could simply have work waiting for you instead of having to chase it all the time? If you think like me, having working waiting for you is a great relief! Thankfully, we at the WIN Firm have been able to shift our focus to being a firm dedicated to TRULY communicating your brand and you will see how we have been blessed with amazing clients in this series of posts! So, if you have been following along and wanted to know where we came from and what we do exactly, you will see it all in this series and be empowered with information to deliver the same results we do!

Think of a time when you bought something and it gave you goose bumps. You knew that your purchase was everything that you wanted. Can you remember a time when that happened? For most of us, this memory is most likely pushed down below all the memories we have of the junk we bought that ended up being thrown away or replaced. Can you think of what it was like being a child and buying that first pair of shoes you really wanted? Did you run faster, jump higher and feel proud of yourself for choosing such an awesome pair of shoes! I remember my first pair of L.A. Gear Pumps. I wanted the Reebok pumps, but my parents couldn't afford those, so L.A. Gear was next in line. It didn't matter to me that I wasn't wearing Reebok, because in my mind I had the same thing. I wore those shoes everyday with the biggest smile on my face and never even cared about Reebok! I bet all of you have similar stories like mine and can take a moment to remember the joy I experienced. What if you were able to find that same joy again? We help our clients find joy and instill that same happiness in their products and customers, which is why our clients have wonderful things to say about our work and continue to help us grow. As you follow this series of posts, you will share in the joy our clients experience and discover ways of implementing the things that make you happy into your work. We are the WIN Firm, and we want to see you win!

Blessings,
Chris Teague
V.P. Marketing
WIN Firm