Branding

Everybody wants to be different. And everyone wants to do business with a company that stands out from the crowd. That’s why the Unique Selling Proposition, or USP, is at the core of every organization’s messaging. It's a simple statement, one or two sentences long, that explains to customers what it is you provide that sets your company apart from your competitors.

Whenever there is an economic downturn, many small companies think marketing is the first budget item that should be cut when times are tough and sales are down.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Many people make that mistake because marketing is usually the last thing a business adds to its toolkit as it grows. As a result, smaller businesses see marketing as some kind of luxury – as a drain on a company’s resources. After all, the company got along for the longest time without it, so why not just do without it again when budgets get tight?

Even as a child, I was interested in advertising. There was a TV campaign (apparently a quite successful one, judging from how long it ran) for a cereal called Trix, featuring a large white rabbit who was addicted to this fruit-flavored cereal. The rabbit seemed like a pretty nice guy, really. He just loved the cereal and wanted some. But the children wouldn’t let him have any.

While you were sleeping, the email marketing world turned last week – and it’s not welcome news for purveyors of mass customer contact.

Around the end of March, unknown intruders gained access to servers at Epsilon, the world’s largest email service provider. Among the data harvested in this attack were millions of end-customer names and email addresses from blue-chip marketers like Amazon, Best Buy, Capital One, Citigroup, Hilton, Marriott, TiVo, US Bank, and Walt Disney.

It took several days for Epsilon to identify the intrusion, days more before an accurate list of affected clients was publicly available, and still more before each of those marketers contacted their customers. During this period, speculation in trade and general press ran rampant, but the affected parties (clearly listening to their legal counsels) were largely silent.

Whether you’re a marketer or an interactive creative, here are the big questions you’re now facing:

Our business might as well be an idea factory since we are on a constant quest for good ideas. Where do these ideas come from and what triggers them?

Author Steven Johnson has a unique perspective on the answer to this question. He focuses on the "how," researches environmental influences, and examines creativity sources in all of us. See his findings in this inspirational animation.

Yes, I’m quoting Peter Parker’s Uncle Ben, from the comic book/TV series/movie series that follows the adventures of Spider-man™ as he protects New York City from supervillains. (Deal with it, readers, pop culture references are cool). Oddly enough, I’m surprised these bad guys haven’t figured out by now that a lot of America remains a superhero-free zone. Maybe instead of always trying to take a bite out of the Big Apple, these supervillains should find a nice city to terrorize out in the country, like Poughkeepsie, or Conshohocken, Pennsylvania?