![]() This is a sensitive one. It’s based on a recent experience with a client of ours. We need to exercise discretion here, but know that our client serves a certain target audience who is, well, for lack of a better word, suffering. Yes, suffering. No, this client of ours is not a personal-injury lawyer. Not a chiropractor. Not an undertaker. Nothing like that. They’re a professional-services firm that just so happens to specialize in helping out a very niche audience who is, by nature of their “situation,” out-and-out miserable. It’s the context of that “situation” which our client specializes in. Thus the audience of sufferers. This begs a bunch of questions:
Here’s why you should keep reading: These questions don’t just pertain to our super-specialized client. They also pertain to you. Believe it or not. To suffer or not to suffer We’ll spare you any suspense: We believe it’s absolutely appropriate to approach, and yes sell to, this audience. Of course that assertion comes loaded with caveats. But before we go there, let’s go here: How does this pertain to you? Who ever said your prospects are suffering? We did. Right here at Copel Communications. Think about it. If they weren’t suffering, they wouldn’t need your services. Here’s a kind of warped parallel: Ever see one of those “ghost-hunter” shows on TV? The ones where a group of “paranormal experts” descend upon some old house or hotel, and wire it up with equipment and recording devices, to try and capture the energy from long-dead spirits? If you have, great. If you haven’t, great. Because we’ll tell you the “secret ingredient” in all of these “reality” shows. (Boy did we ever smirk when we added the quotation marks to the word “reality,” but that’s the topic of another article.) Here’s the secret sauce, which all of these shows employ generously: If you think about the “team” of ghost-hunters, who do you think of? Exactly: People who are well-versed in the paranormal and the technology used to try and capture mysterious otherworldly behavior. People who know their history. People who are naturally curious, and certainly not afraid of the dark or things that go bump in the night. Wait. Scratch that. What? “People who are not afraid of the dark or things that go bump in the night.” Nope. Not a qualifier for these TV shows. In fact, the exact opposite is true. Watch any one of these. Sure, there will be a team of experts who are intrepid. But every time—trust us on this—there will be one person on that team who is utterly terrified of the dark, who jumps out of their skin at the slightest noise. Think about that. Why would you ever, ever, intentionally add a scaredy-cat to your ghost-hunting team? (Don’t worry. We’ll connect this to “suffering target audience” in just a second.) The answer: It makes for good television. Mind you, it’s not the professional ghost-hunters who choose Mister Scaredy-Cat to join their team. It’s the show’s producer. Because if the team were all nothing but ice-cool professionals, they would go in, do their job, get their info... ...and the show would be boring. Simple as that. Approach with caution If you watch any of these ghost-hunter shows, the best parts are when some door creaks, or a bat flies out of a pantry, and Mister Scaredy-Cat utterly leaps out of his skin and runs off screaming into the night, knocking down expensive equipment as he goes. It’s delightful. It’s funny. It’s fun to watch. And it gives you a little dosage of smug self-satisfaction as you think: I would never do that! And it keeps you watching the show, instead of switching the channel. So back to our client and their suffering audience. And at least as important, yours. If you only reach out to prospects who are the “professional ghost-hunters,” you’re barking up the wrong tree. To mix metaphors (one of our dubious skills here at Copel Comms), that tree is connected to the wrong sales funnel. The lower in the funnel, the more your prospects are suffering. Not necessarily personally (as is the case with our client), but certainly professionally. So. Now we can pick up the thread, and tell you how our client—with a little help from us—approached this delicate situation. Our client is truly empathetic. Spoiler alert: The principal is also a veteran/survivor of the exact same “situation” as their target audience. So they know what these prospects are going through. Importantly, they also know that there’s light at the end of the tunnel—something that none of these prospects can grasp, deep in the doldrums of despair. And that’s the way in. This is about comfort. It’s about succor. It’s about understanding. It’s about hope. Then it’s about professional expertise. About helping prospects face a difficult reality. It’s the delicate balance of “tough” and “love.” Now think about your prospects. We can safely assume they’re not as all-out depressed as our client’s prospects, but they’re still suffering, in their way. And this leads to some interesting creative/marketing approaches for you. Depending on the degree of “suffering,” you can dial up (or down) the level of comfort-and-compassion accordingly. But just knowing that opens up a new window, for you, to really reach these people, and connect with them at a much deeper level than you might ordinarily do through traditional approaches. And then, of course, once you’ve engaged with them—once you’ve gotten their attention—you can segue to the value that you bring. Which will end everyone’s professional suffering. Even yours. Need help unpacking challenges like this? Contact us. We’d be happy to help.
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![]() You’ll like this story. It’s useful. Recently we were working with a client to help them strategize the new branding for their business. Granted, we need to purposely “fuzz-ify” the details here, so for the purposes of this story, let’s make two broad points: 1) The new branding was for a B2B service-based business. (Feel familiar to you?) 2) The name was something like “Rocket-Speed Consulting.” That’s totally made up, and not the name, but again, it will help us tell this story to you. This client had already created some “1.0” branding which they shared with us. As you can likely imagine from what we’d just described, the logo featured a picture of a rocket ship. And every single offering from this company was named something like “Flight Speed Service,” or “Supersonic Payload Power,” or “Blast-Off Engagement.” What’s wrong with that, you might ask? To mix metaphors (one of our dubious skills here at Copel Communications), this got our Spidey Sense tingling to the point where we had a Vietnam flashback. A higher power Ages ago, there was a car company called Saturn. You might not remember it. It was actually owned and launched by General Motors, with much fanfare. It was a really innovative brand, and car, and gained a loyal following for quite some time. For example, they introduced the concept of no-haggle pricing. Their car doors weren’t stamped sheet metal, but rather plastic: One of their TV commercials showed a supermarket shopping cart smacking into the side of a parked Saturn, only to bounce off, with the dented door of the car magically popping back into shape without so much as a scratch. They had a pretty logo, too. It was a square, with a minimalist illustration of the planet Saturn, with its signature rings, cropped within the square. Red and white. With the name “Saturn” underneath. Very nicely executed. So what’s this have to do with Spiderman? And Vietnam? Our Spidey Sense tingled, because there was something about all this “Rocket-Speed” 1.0 branding that didn’t feel quite right. And we experienced a Vietnam flashback, because this reminded of us one day, back in the day, when we toiled at an ad agency in New York. Inner vs. outer space That ad agency did a lot of “automotive retail advertising,” which is code for “screaming car dealership ads.” One day, we were working on a print ad for a Saturn dealership (see? it’s coming full-circle), and consulted the manufacturer’s ad planner to help us. Uh-oh. Jargon alert. What’s an “ad planner”? Back in the day, these would be printed books. Full of artwork and logos you could use in dealership ads, along with copious guidelines detailing what you could and couldn’t do in those ads. Today, these don’t exist as printed books, any more than Saturn exists as a car company. But branding guidelines live on. They’re important. They’re huge. Anyway, there was one page in this Saturn ad planner which showed what you could and couldn’t do in any ads. And it said, quite plainly: “No stars or planets.” Huh? Now, a typical guideline for ads like these will dictate that you use their logo, as a measuring stick, and be required to allow a certain number of logo-widths around it, as white space, to elevate it, to prevent clutter. To protect the brand. That’s common. And it was the case for Saturn, too. But no stars? No planets? Just as Saturn didn’t want to muddy up their branding with visual elements impinging upon the logo’s “breathing space” on a page (or screen), they also didn’t want to muddy up the powerful feelings that are implicit in the name “Saturn” by calling attention to it as a planet in the solar system. Think about that. That’s brilliant. “Saturn” means something to you. It’s cool. It’s beautiful. It’s hinted at in the logo. But not one of their ads mentions planets or stars. It’s forbidden. It would cheapen the brand. Can you think of another brand that does this today? Hint: Their logo also looks like a familiar object. Yet they make no reference to that type of object in any of their advertising. You guessed it. Apple. Their logo looks like an apple. Replete with a bite taken out of it. (Legend has it that the “bite” was added because without it, the original looked too much like a cherry.) But you’ll never see any mention of “fruit” or “juice” or “trees” in any of their advertising. Same reason. (The closest they came to that was naming the Macintosh, back in 1984, which is an intentional misspelling of the McIntosh variety of apple. But as you know, it’s only ever called a “Mac” these days.) Helping our client Fresh from our Vietnam flashback (which should give you a hint of what those New York days were like), we were able to tell this story, and make this suggestion, to our client: Keep the “Rocket Ship” name. But nix every other “rocket” reference in the sub-branding. Protect the brand. Elevate it. Don’t cheapen it. This client of ours is very smart. They got it immediately. And they implemented it, too. Today, their branding is very clean, smart, and dare we say, Apple-like. Need help with a branding challenge for your business? This story, and lesson, are just one small sliver of the type of support we offer. Contact us today to learn more. We’d love to hear from you. |
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